Development Culture
It might be possible to express the development culture as a continuum with a shop where everyone is unhappy and doesn’t enjoy working there on one extreme to a shop where everyone enjoys working there so much that they would do so for free. All companies involved in solving business problems with software based solutions should strive for the happier extreme because the quality of the solution will be much better than a solution created under the whip of the task master. The popularity of books such as Patrick Lencioni’s “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” attest to the recognition of businesses in the value of a happy and engaged development team. Happy developers care more deeply about pleasing customers and work harder and smarter to provide satisfactory solutions that will last and improve the productivity of their customers. Unhappy developers do little more than the minimal work asked of them and are unlikely to innovate or put forth alternatives that could improve the software development processes and technology they currently use.
Development cultures exist along a continuim. The two extremes of the continuim are:
- Team members loving working each day and greatly trust their teammates, enjoy they job, love their customers and the software solution they provide. Mistakes are tolerated, the focus is on team outcomes and not individuals.
- Most team members look forward to retirement or a new job. They don’t like working with many of their co-workers and don’t trust them. Company incentives are based on individual performance that creates competition between team members. The penalty for mistakes or not following orders is severe, which suppresses creativity and attempts to make improvements.