Working Collaboratively

Working collaboratively means bringing workers together and getting the input of many people into the process and effort of the work. Everyone brings their strengths to the table. Some people may be more junior or more senior than others, and some people may have more or less relevant skills to the task at hand, but everyone still has something unique to contribute to the work. Some people in the group might have more years of experience, but everyone can have a slightly different focus and have picked different disciplines, different languages, different frameworks, and different paradigms to follow and for which to have a passion.

Leaders of teams that value collaborative work will often practice selfless leadership.

Backlinks

• Mob Programming

  Mob programming is a method of working collaboratively in which a small team of software developers all work on one problem together with one person at the keyboard at a time. This can help prevent knowledge silos and increase knowledge sharing throughout the team that is working within a given context.

• Connectedness

  Connectedness is important to me in a working context. To me, it speaks to taking the backgrounds and skills that we all bring to the table to help one another but then putting ego aside and celebrate the combination of everything that went into the process to create something that no person could have created all on their own. The work becomes a product of the collective. It means that working collaboratively is important, and it is important to make sure it is done thoughtfully and carefully.

• Selfless Leadership

  Selfless leadership means stepping up to serve and organize others while never forgetting about the hard work that goes into every part of the finished work. It is the opposite of the idea that, simply because someone happens to be at the top of an organization chart, they therefore must deserve all or most of the credit for everything that needed to happen in bringing everything together. This style of leadership may or may not provide a vision and creative direction, but it would always be with humility and with the knowledge that everyone is working collaboratively and also bringing their own ideas and effort into everything that represents the finished work.

• Remote Mob Programming: An Introvert's Tale of Working Collaboratively

  This talk about mob programming and working collaboratively has been given at the following event: