—- In sl-agileyahoogroups [dot] com, “Geoffrey” wrote:
>
> Maybe things are better than you think they are and for some reason you have taken a negative view.
> That is the thought that just came to my mind after blogging about silo’ed development organizations.
> Here is a snippet of the blog:
>
> If you have development which seems silo’ed did you ever stop to think that maybe that is just a negative adjective “silo’ed” and what you really have is development divided along products that run efficiently and almost autonomously?
>
> I argue that every team has some aspects of self organization. Through the hiring, the firing, and the team transfers, teams settle into a state that is acceptable both to the team members and well as to management. Even if your team is ran by a dictator you can still quit so anyone that remains on the team does so by choice.
>
> I argue that any outward examination of a development organization may describe the organization as silo’ed. A well defined organization will always have well defined attributes that may be described as walls. Any skilled debater knows to use adjectives that are commonly viewed as a negativity to advocate their agenda. Possibly this silo’ed and walled development organization is really a self organized team aligned specifically to product needs and technological needs.
>
> Just some thoughts. That’s all.
> Maybe it would be better to first describe something in the most positive light and manner first and then see if it is worth the time to describe it negatively and tear it down.
> You don’t have to tear something down to build something new.
> Geoff
>
> Here is the link: http://digerati-illuminatus.blogspot.com/2010/07/resources-versus-teams.html

Very nice, Geoffrey, thanks for the thought. I agree, it is all too easy to be critical of another’s organization, and ditto it is all too easy use subtly biased terms like “silos” to imply there is something wrong, (... there almost certainly is something wrong, but that’s just part of being in the world, it’s not a distinguishing feature. ).

I had a colleague/boss once in IBM Consulting who had a two-page questionnaire he used to assess clients. After listening to his questions, I said, “That list is so comprehensive, no one could pass it. And if they did, they’s have a project so tame it would have no market interest.” ... in “Waltzing With Bears”, DeMarco and Lister talk about the need for a /certain/ amount of risk.

Similarly, I suspect some amount of organizational stress is to be expected in order to stay competitive (I don’t know that it’s true, I guess I’ve never seen an organization without organizational stress, so I don’t know what one would look like), and the question is more around where the stress lies, how much, what it permits to get accomplished and what it hampers …

... I like the analogy of balancing a broom on your hand – it’s out of balance at every instant, but one can quite reliably keep it from falling … we call it “balancing” a broom, but it’s not balancing, it constantly keeping it from falling (ckiff? – should we call it ckiffing a broom?)

... so maybe we’re talking about ckiffing an org…

you can ckiff a broom while standing still, walking or running — ckiffing while running is harder than ckiffing while standing still…

Hmm, I think I agree that ckiffing an org while it’s walking is easier than ckiffing an org while it’s running. Unlike broom-ckiffing, though, although it is easier to ckiff an org which is standing still – at first -, if the org is simply standing still, it will fall on it’s own, so part of ckiffing an org is keeping it moving.

I like this ckiffing word :). Think I’ll use it some more.

Alistair