Sharing experiences, practices and methods related to shared code ownership and the relation to organisational structures. Or how much should Conways law be taken into account.
When simplifying organisational structures one will go against the basics of Conways law and will need to lean on the abilities to have shared code ownership. As such a perfect topic to explore more in depth with one of my Technical mentors in the field: Nelis Boucké.
We’ll address dynamics, mandates, architectures, freedom, going from A to B from an experience point of view. Giving examples on how it has been dealt with, no theories or strong statements here. Pure experience samples.
The origin of this coffee talk is a LinkedIn conversation: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jurgendesmet_i-see-many-of-my-tech-friends-mentioning-activity-6771753054770364416-r6Hh/
Who’s Nelis Boucké?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelis/
https://twitter.com/nelisboucke
Nelis his blog - https://nelis.boucke.be/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the topics
00:45 Who’s Nelis?
01:50 Advantages and disadvantages of shared code and code ownership
02:52 The dynamics of Platform Teams & Application Teams
06:20 Mandates versus Engagement & motivation
07:11 Shared code ownership example maintaining coding freedom within a single squad/team
07:54 Domain models as bounded context and supporting practice to keep a high level of freedom for structural changes
09:18 A single backlog for a multitude of squads to enable shared code ownership with a high feature focus
12:00 What about less good architectural structures and code ownership?
13:08 Pairing & Mobbing (Ensemble) as practice to grow a different mindset and adopting a more appropriate architecture
14:54 Pressure to deliver versus pair & mob sessions?
16:54 What about having an identity and ownership? Ownership in building versus ownership in production and changing team (members)
19:20 Explicit learning moments versus coordination costs
20:44 Architecture Decision Records and socialising decisions
21:27 Innovation afternoons
22:24 Conclusions on Conways Law & Code Ownership
24:40 Expanding on Architecture and misconceptions on micro services
About me:
I’m a Chief Simplification Officer, I help leaders of large organizations deliver on their commitments to high performance.
Before, during and after an Agile adoption or any kind of Lean transformation, large organizations often find that they need to de-scale and simplify organizational structures and processes. I function as an Executive-level guide for companies approaching their second growth phase. Industry leaders in banking, insurance, telecommunications, healthcare, utilities and media hire me to help remove obstacles in their path to innovation.
We address specific pain points in the system so upper-management can learn to enable emergent solutions. For example:
➸ Horizontal complexity- consolidating functions across the enterprise
➸ Vertical complexity - shedding obsolete roles, layers and reporting structures
➸ Spatial complexity - preparing distributed / remote teams for success
➸ Technical complexity - remove technical debt by decoupling, DevOps & XP practices
Contact us :
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgendesmet/
Website: https://simplificationofficers.com
Twitter : https://twitter.com/JurgenLACoach
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/jurgends
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/jurgendesmet/
