How to build an open software team culture

With the development of agile software Development, "" people-oriented "software team building concept has been more and more attention, but, in this aspect of research, exploration and practice is not very good, I think it is now to the individual, team, organization and even social forces to act together.

Building an open Software team culture is not only a few times technical exchange and design discussion so simple, it should be a long-term system engineering. So what does an open software team mean? What should individuals and teams do? This is a question that the team's managers and team members should consider seriously.

A programmer's view of culture

The natural attribute of culture

"Culture" always gives people a feeling of high above, which is influenced by the definition of narrow culture, that is, culture is the spiritual product of language, literature, art and all ideology created by mankind. In Chinese ancient books, "Wen" not only refers to words, articles, literary talent, but also refers to rites and music system, legal provisions, etc. is the meaning of "enlightenment" and "teaching line".

Can culture be nurtured and cultivated? We can analyze it from the generation and inheritance of culture. The production of a culture must originate from the inner and outer needs of human beings, and its inheritance must be attributed to the cultivation and enlightenment, but it should also follow the objective law of the development of things. Therefore, I think a viable culture must conform to nature. Today, many of our traditional cultures are facing a crisis of survival or marginalization, mainly because the internal and external needs that are already supporting them have ceased to exist, and these cultures will inevitably be eliminated by history, just a matter of time.

The closed attribute of culture

Building an open team culture is a difficult historical project. Many people may not realize that "openness" and "culture" are a pair of contradictions, because culture essentially has a closed attribute. Weak cultures try to avoid assimilation or annexation by powerful cultures, and strong cultures want to expand as much as possible to gain greater benefits. From this point of view, the war between people, the annexation between organizations is a cultural phenomenon, is a part of human culture.

Human-cultural complex

We discuss culture is generally based on group organization, in fact, each natural person is a complex cultural integration, including language, art, science, religion and even religion, and many other factors. The cultural complex does not go beyond the two attributes previously mentioned.

First of all, most of us receive homogeneous indoctrination in a similar education system, but in the end the cultural manifestations are different, which means that individual culture is a buffet culture: what kind of food is available to the restaurant determines what we can eat, But in the end, what we eat is the result of our own choice.

Secondly, each individual is difficult to escape the closed trend, but the degree of difference. This trend is increasing with age or with the increase of knowledge and experience. A typical example is that the more people get older, the harder they are to change their habits. I have tried to persuade my parents to make appropriate adjustments to some of the details of life for health reasons, but they ended up in failure. Finally, when I realized that this might be related to cultural closeness, I stopped doing this kind of useless work.

What is an open culture

The open culture is a kind of cultural appearance, in fact, quality and democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and other life ideas and social ideas. When it comes to democracy and freedom, we have to mention Hu Shih, the leading figure in the Chinese new culture movement. The following two quotations, although in the discussion of democracy, actually sketched a picture of "open".

Citation 1: "What Hu Shi said about the essence of individualism can be summed up as ' independence, participation in struggle ' eight words." A democratic way of life is independent and full of individual freedom, but on the whole, it is participatory and has a common ideal. Independence without participation is impossible to achieve this ideal, participation without independence, will lose the value of the individual. In a democratic way of life, what the Chinese need most is the spirit of participation, not the party, and independence. "(Less read Lu Xun, old do not read Hu Shi")

Citation 2: "The democratic way of life, the performance of the political system, seems to be the minority to the majority, in fact its most wonderful is that most do not kill the minority, do not dare not to respect the minority, more dare not oppress the minority, the destruction of minorities." "(" Hu Shih Manuscripts ")

The voice of Hu Shih still sounds endless light today. In an open organization everyone should be equal, at least on the spiritual level. It is difficult for me to give a simple definition of an open culture, but there are at least two ways to discriminate between "true openness" and "false openness"-autonomy and two-way nature. In a truly open organization, the exchange of information is diverse and free. Any openness that gives in to power cannot be sustained or deepened. In a truly open organization, the exchange of information is two-way. A speaker standing in front of the podium and a devout audience sitting under the stage are not representatives of an open culture.

A core of open culture and three aspects

The openness between two or more cultures is based on common interests. If we think of the team as a cultural community, then the core of an open team culture is to establish common interests.

For any organization, "people/processes/products" are three closely related components. Next, we will explore the relationship between the open culture and the three.

Human factors

A culture at the beginning of its formation and development is relatively open, because it needs to absorb sufficient nutrients from the outside world. As it matures, its closeness becomes more and more abundant. For individuals, this is also the general rule. The difference is that human maturity is more influenced by subjective ideas. Many knowledgeable people in the real world can still maintain a strong thirst for knowledge to support the continuous development of their individual culture.

We are accustomed to the character of a person "introverted" or "outward" label, then the open team culture to us more outward? If so, an open team culture will become elusive. A person who is eager to learn is the easiest to open up--the openness here is not just about people, but about all the useful knowledge. Therefore, the establishment of an open team culture eventually transformed into a learning-oriented organization.

Although the construction of learning organization is still a challenging task, but at least it is not a strange topic, this article only do a little analysis: the motivation of enduring learning from a noble ideal. We can't just be content with what we can do, but work on what we want.

Process factors

Maybe a lot of programmers will ask me why I'm trying to rip the process in, what does it have to do with an open team culture? I can understand how many programmers are hostile to the various software development processes because they put a lot of problems down to the process's fault. This is somewhat related to the team's lack of understanding of process unification. The process should have been a programmer's partner, not a stumbling block.

The establishment and implementation of the process is cost, but it is also profitable. We should not only carefully plan the team's input in each process, but also evaluate the corresponding outputs. This assessment is not easy because of the lack of a simple and consistent standard.

The process of unification is a platform for team communication, an open catalyst and an important cornerstone for building an open team culture.

Product factor

Establishing a perfect product knowledge base is an important guarantee for building an open software team culture. Imagine, if the product knowledge of the level of difference, team members will be difficult to carry out effective communication and cooperation. In my opinion, none of the High-tech jobs in the product Knowledge Base meet the same challenges as software development. The lack of sufficient and effective technical documentation is the reality facing most software development teams.

Concluding

The establishment of interest community is the core of open team culture. It is a concrete method and tool to motivate the team to establish the habit of learning, to improve the process continuously and to establish a knowledge base to perfect the product.

Although this article does not directly address specific issues, it is hoped that it will help to explore the nature of the problem. It is always helpful to clarify concepts, define problems, and analyze origins before taking action.

Author Hu Zhenghua, currently working in the CA Technologies China Technology Center, is engaged in the development and research of data backup and high availability enterprise software, and focuses on the research and practice in the fields of software engineering, knowledge engineering and team culture.