DrupalCon Amsterdam 2014: The Myth of the Meerkat: Organising Self-Organising Teams

Speakers: jason.coghlan
Proponents of open source technologies, especially Drupal, have a strong understanding of the collective effort required to achieve a very ambitious goal. We understand the need for shared vision, team collaboration and a strong sense of community. All to support what is essentially a large scale globally distributed self-organising team.

For those of us whose daily work life involves implementing such technologies do we apply a similar approach to our own projects? Is the self-organising team a reality, especially in a commercial or public sector Drupal services environment? If so, how well does self-organisation work in practice and what are the factors that underpin the formation of a successful team?

This session aims to:

Focus on people as individuals and how to balance personality and behaviour for optimal outcomes.
The concept of distributed leadership and project management over command and control.
Define how much process is enough to support but not hinder a successful team.
Look at how commercial realities and the pressure to deliver affect the ability to self organise.
Discuss recruitment methods for creating self-organising teams.
Define the effect of organisational culture on the motivation to self-organise.
Explore if an agile approach combined with a strong self-organising team is the panacea for successful Drupal projects or just a utopian dream.
Entertain with tales of Machiavellian treachery, brutal politics and cute furry animals.
BoF: A follow up discussion to this, and another related session on the Business Track, has been scheduled - https://amsterdam2014.drupal.org/bof/...