A Lesson From Open Source: Make Time To Collaborate

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Earlier this week I was listening to the Drupalcon keynote “State of Drupal” presentation given by Dries Buytaert, project lead for the popular open source content management system. I wanted to hear Dries discuss any interesting new capabilities (Drupal providing the basis of WCM “distributions,” kind of like Linux distributions, is intriguing to think about) as well as project metrics (3,000 Drupalcon attendees, 6,700 add-on projects, some other big numbers). However, to me, neither of these were the most interesting parts of the presentation.

At one point in the presentation Dries said the following:

“The key message is, as we grow we need to stick to our core values and core culture…It's a culture of sharing and collaboration and it is absolutely key to everything that we do.”

He said this while showing the slide below:

Open source projects can be great examples of successful collaboration. Although it sounds simple, expecting your people to make time to collaborate (and to put it on their schedules), I think, is a big deal. Many executives have outlined, in some form, the same challenges (we are growing, stick to our culture, collaborate). However, I suspect far fewer of them took it the step further and told their people to put collaboration on their schedules.

When was the last time you reserved time on your calendar to collaborate? Outside of meetings (where someone else reserved time on your calendar) have your ever reserved time to collaborate?

Comments

[Ian Skerrett]

Agree 100%. As an example, when Eclipse was first started some of the key developers allocated close to 40% of their time to spend on collaboration. It takes time but good collaboration can reap huge benefits.