A short presentation I did for the stanford business school on scaling software development orgs

1. Scale
Successive stages of letting go
@chfry

2. “Life can only be
understood backwards;
but it must be lived
forwards” -Kierkegaard

7. Topics
• Hiring
• Autonomous Teams
• Information Dispersal
• Economics
• Organizational Hacks
• Iteration
• Learning Organization
• Structure & Repetition
• Invest in Leadership
• Being a public figure
• Socialize / Ceremony / Celebrate

8. “Hire the best and get out
of their way”
What is your philosophy of leadership?
How much direct management?
How hands off should you be?
Everyone is an executive

9. How would you run a 10
person, 100 person, 1000
person organization?
Let’s design

10. What is the unit of
management?
Autonomous Teams

11. What is the unit of
management?
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam
AutonomoAutonomo
usus
TeamTeam

12. Information Dispersal &
Communication
Everyone is an executive - Drucker
Leadership is communication
Listen -> Decide -> Communicate @dickc
To create autonomy push as much
information as you can to the leaf nodes

13. Economics
Imagine you are the mayor of a small town
You should break every year or so
The job of the hierarchy is to defeat the
hierarchy
Monarchy and Democracy

14. Organizational hacks
Innovative algorithms that invert the
economics
OOM
Agile
CMP

15. Organizational hacks
What is something
you’ve always wanted
to try?

16. Iteration
Get to 1.0 as soon as possible - Edit mode
Iterate / Learn

17. Learning Organization
Build an org that learns through honesty,
retrospectives and data
Plato vs Aristotle

18. Structure & Repetition
Use just too little structure
Build a regular rhythm

19. Invest in leadership
@dickc runs a class on management for
every new manager
Focus on leadership
Educate

20. Being a public figure
You are on stage, all the time
You own the perception of your work

21. Socialize / Ceremony /
Celebrate
Companies are networks of relationships
between human beings

22. Thank
you!