For Your Eyes Only?
By Dale Dougherty
In last month's column, I mentioned that I'd bought an e-book version of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, by Thomas Friedman. In his book, Friedman describes how the National Security Agency (NSA), a highly secret intelligence-gathering arm of the U.S. government, changed its ways after the Cold War. Instead of disseminating information to agencies on a "need to know" basis, the NSA began operating on a "need to share" premise. This meant that—in theory, at least—information was no longer hidden away, but made available to any agency that might find it useful.
The NSA's more open stance is a particularly apt metaphor for Web development projects. In Web design firms and other companies, projects require teamwork and usually intense involvement. Working on a Web team is like playing rugby—a scrum that leads to lots of passing back and forth. You never know what information might prove useful to whom, and you're often surprised by breakthroughs from unexpected sources. For that reason, collaboration is fundamental; it's a given for any team I'm on.
A new developer named Rael Dornfest joined our team at O'Reilly Network, and after several months he mentioned that he felt my group didn't collaborate enough. "It seems like everyone is working on their own thing," he said. As you might imagine, I was disturbed by the comment, and asked what he meant. Rael said that he wanted to know more about what was going on, whether it directly affected him or not. He wanted people to be more open about what they were doing, instead of just telling others what they were planning to do or had already done.<>
