What Makes a Great Development Organization?
It’s a tempting headline, isn’t it? The answer to creating a great development organization lies just behind the click of a mouse.
Spoiler alert: There is no secret formula, and anyone who tries to sell you that is, well, selling you something.
There are, however, some principles that I’ve seen work in fast-moving organizations like the one you’re building (or trying to build).
They are, in no particular order:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
- Excellence
- Humility
The first three I stole from Dan Pink’s book Drive.
Let’s go quickly through each one of these, and I’ve included some must-read resources on this topic at the end of the article.
Autonomy
Great developers (or even good ones) don’t like someone staring over their shoulder all the time. Make sure the work is understood, make sure the deadlines are clearly communicated, and let your developers get to work.
Mastery
Great developers are always looking to get better at their craft. Make sure you provide opportunities for the team to stretch and grow. Things like getting them to speak at meetups to learn public speaking can help them work on areas of weakness that set them up for leadership positions or even starting their own company.
Purpose
How does the work being done contribute to the success of the organization? Help everyone on the team to understand clearly that the work they’re doing matters.
Excellence
Do you demand excellence from everyone in the organization, or do you allow for exceptions for under-performers? Bad work creates a drag on the organization, both in terms of excessive bugs and excessive questions / explanations from the more senior team members. If you have someone who’s missing the mark, work to understand the problem in a restorative way, but don’t let consistent poor performance go.
A key component of excellence is the willingness to give and receive direct feedback without being arrogant or harsh. See the last bullet on the importance of humility.
Humility
This is, without a doubt, the most difficult thing to foster in a high-performing organization. Strong people have strong opinions, which often come off, especially to junior developers, as arrogance. It takes time to build the kind of trust where feedback and opinions are taken for what they are.
Just Remember
Great cultures ultimately derive from the leadership in the organization. The principles I’ve outlined in this article are a start for you to think about, but you’ll no doubt have other things that are important to you.
Your Assignment
There are two fantastic organizations that I believe provide different, but equally valuable, outlines for how they’ve built their organizations. Fortunately for us, they’ve shared their practices with the public.
Read the Netflix Culture manifesto, generally considered the bible for culture-making in technology companies.
Next, read about Etsy’s Just Culture, and how they think about cultures of blame and managing complex systems. This list of articles is remarkable.
After you’ve read through all of these, write a first draft of your own manifesto for the development organization. What should you pull from these other organizations, and what is uniquely yours?