Collaborate

Working alongside some very interesting and high performance teams I have come to believe that success with reuse is more than technical brilliance or elegant design. Great teams produce high quality work, understand each other, their strengths, their limitations, and most importantly harness conflict as a medium for healthy constructive dialogue, creativity, and innovation.

Peter Senge in his landmark book The Fifth Discipline says: “Almost all of us, in one time or another, have been part of a group of people working together in a extraordinary way. ..ever been part of a group who worked together in a extraordinary way, who were really exceptional in their effectiveness, in what they were able to achieve, and created a kind of environment that was really exciting to be part of.”

Why is collaboration relevant to systematic reuse?

Because, producing something reusable under severe deadlines and delivery pressures, integrating with legacy systems and processes, working with a myriad teams spread across several organizational departments, geographies, and still delivering high quality products is incredibly hard. It is the kind of challenge that motivates technology leaders and professionals go to work and make a difference.

The fundamental technical concepts for systematic reuse are well understood and what differentiates the winners from the rest of the pack is their ability to execute the reuse vision within their business domains with the help of productive teams on the ground. Every single component, service, asset matters.

Extraordinary teams talk to each other often, exchange ideas and collaborate more effectively, and most of all identify and mitigate risks to ensure the team as a whole is best positioned for success. If this sounds a lot like the agile manifesto it is not coincidental! Building reusable services requires creative brainstorming, conflict resolution, design synthesis, and arriving at a logical point that will be used to deliver your iteration. This isn’t an event – its iterative, continuous, and execution focused. If your team blends creativity and continuous delivery systematic reuse will be a natural byproduct.