(luKa)

lunedì 3 marzo 2014

Motivations and prerequisites for self-organisation

During this information age some projects can face higher levels of inherent complexity.
As ambiguity, uncertainties and unknowns increase, our ability to predict is diminished, no matter how good you are and how hard you work.
Change can be faster and sometimes viral, levels of interdependence can be higher and available information can be incomplete and fragmented.

Working practices, people skills and expertise, tools and work organisation must all adapt to and fit specific project needs. Cross-functional self-organising crews and teams that work together from "concept to cash" have a higher capability to absorb and deal with more complexity, can respond to change faster and better, are more resilient to failure and misfortune, can organically grow and scale and naturally encourage shared commitment and cooperation of motivated individuals toward a common purpose.

It is common to see teams that are not allowed to self-organise at all, while other teams self-organize in total anarchy. The challenge is a self-organisation that works. And that requires the discipline of well-functioning self-regulation and useful barriers.

The following points are 3 fundamental prerequisites for a team's self-organisation:

1 - Empowerment: Let people do it
2 - Boundaries and barriers
3 - Discipline of Self-Regulation

I will go into more details in the next posts on these prerequisites.

See Also:

- On Understanding Software Agility - A Social Complexity Point Of View by Joseph Pelrine, Europe’s leading expert on Agile software development.