This is not about aerospace or getting people on Mars (that stuff is easy). It is about how to create an environment where people help each other out. If you maximize utilization. Set absolute deadlines. You set up your team to be self centered, stressed out and in a mode of self preservation. If you are in an organization were teams are expected to collaborate and share extensively, you shouldn’t do any of the things above.

“It is so cumbersome to have go round talking to people and submitting pull requests. Can’t we just go ahead and just duplicate or do whatever we want?” Yes, working together and collaborating is hard. It requires a willingness to listen to others and learning about different points of view. This is of course something which takes time to get right. Because it is about people and dealing with people is different each time and for each interaction.

Photo by Michael Heiss A popular mantra the past few years is that “software is a collaborative game”. However in a large organization or project, is this really possible? When things get big and the number of communications lines exceed what is possible to handle for an individual, is it really possible to collaborate? A behavior of teams when things get clouded is to construct a world which is tangible and possible to manage.