Sense and Respond

6

Organize for Collaboration

At the heart of digital innovation is the small, cross-functional team. This team is the engine that powers modern software development, its smallest useful unit—the molecule. While industrial production is built around assembly lines, digital production is, increasingly, built around this small team.

Much has been written about how to make these teams work, and indeed these ideas have been widely adopted in Silicon Valley and other places where software is made. But it’s worth spending a few moments here, before we go any further, to look at this small team and consider what makes it tick.

Hero Myths

There are two competing hero stories in the world of software. The first is of the lone hacker. We usually imagine ...