Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders

Section ISetting the Collaborative Context

Before digging into how to apply collaboration in software development projects, we need to set a useful context in which to bound the work. First, we have to agree on a good working definition of the term “collaboration” so that we can apply an appropriate focus to our project practices. Because our projects don’t exist in a vacuum, we also have to look at what constitutes a general culture of collaboration and what makes it appealing to our way of working. Collaborative cultures rely on leaders who can understand the power of collaboration and nurture its growth in their teams. So, to complete the picture, we’ll pull together a bit of guidance about the leaders who engender collaboration, and then ...