Culture First, Tools Last

Building Successful Collaborative Development

Guy MartinDirector – Open Source StrategyAutodesk@guyma | @AutodeskOSS

My Perspective

Topics

•Tool Selection Drivers•Culture, Process & Tools•Organizational Jujitsu•Good & Bad Tool Rollouts•Things to Consider

Tool Selection Drivers

Collaboration Tool Stakeholders

What Drives Tool Selection?

$$ Adaptability

Productivity Standardization/Support

Culture, Processes & Tools

Culture First – Tools Last

Existing Culture•Collaboration Style

• Awaiting permission vs. taking initiative•Transparency

• Decisions/communications private or open•Meritocracy

• Top-down or driven by valuable contributors

Existing Processes

•Contribution• Tightly controlled or open

•Governance• Tightly controlled or meritocratic

•Organizational• Top-down, bottom-up, mixed

Existing Tools

•Knowledge Sharing• People sharing or ‘documenting’

•Reuse• Data being referenced or abandoned

•Metrics• What works (or doesn’t)

Organizational Jujitsu

Using Hierarchies to Drive Change

“People think that mitigating the effects of hierarchy requires working against it. But that’s not the case.

Instead, you’ve got to learn to work with it.”

- Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat CEO

HR Process as Change Agent

…work still needed for other roles (product management, etc.)

New Core Competenciesfor Open/Inner Source

Good & Bad Tool Rollouts

The Good

Contenders Winner Why?

Autodesk Corporate Real-time Chat

The Bad

Contenders Winner? Why?

• Most projects using git • Culture of silos• Process overhead not

aligned with the tool

Forge.mil DoD Collaboration System

The In-Between

Incumbents Mandated Challenges

• Culture of silos• Process/dev practices

not aligned with tool• Monolithic code

architectures

Autodesk Internal Source Control/Sharing

Things to Consider

Understand Your Culture

Asking Permission Begging Forgiveness

Siloed/Insular Transparent/Collaborative

Product Management Driven

Engineering Driven

OpenClosed

Tools Landscape

• People bringing in tools (‘Shadow IT’)• People building their own tools• Why?

• No knowledge of what’s going on elsewhere?• Desire for control?• Speed of deployment?

Build a ‘Pull Request’ Culture

• Shared responsibility/control• Code• Processes• Policies• Information• Tools

• Engaged employees drive collaboration• Review prevents ‘anarchy’

Align Tools with Reality

• Resist vendor pressure • They don’t always live your reality

• Allow some experimentation/flexibility• Cull tools that aren’t working

• Follow the community• Explore areas of critical mass

Adapt the Tool to the User, not the User to the Tool

Release Early, Release Often

• Iterate as quickly as is practical• Choose customizable tools

• Allow all stakeholders to drive process/tool customization• Practice patience – your culture won’t change overnight

Questions & Discussion