Agile
3
4
5
This is about speed, speed and more speed. Full stack teams should design fea-
tures, test concepts, try and fail (if necessary), address issues and release the
product quickly. Hence, full stack teams need great communication, very short
feedback cycles and a penchant for action. They do not have to be located
physically together to have all this - virtual is fine. The key to velocity is to cre-
ate an empowered team that can make a decision, see it through, evaluate the
results and quickly course correct if necessary.
Accountable
When a full stack team has the power to make decisions, it can be held account-
able for the outcomes. In other words, the buck stops here. There is no more “it
worked in the Dev environment” type attitude. The team should be account-
able for the end result from all perspectives -- product quality, customer need,
meeting expectations, matching the required Service Level Agreements and so
on. Full accountability means the team must understand the full benefits and
impacts of the product on the end customer / consumer / buyer, and be on the
hook for all of it, to ensure a successful outcome.
Value Generating
A full stack team is able to: remove waste; automate where necessary; do what
really matters versus what is easy; deliver value. The last two goals are crucial.
They sound obvious, but how often do you see developers gold-plating fea-
tures, or teams working on something super cool that provides value only to a
small subset of end users, or perhaps not at all. On the business side, how often
do meetings take place just for the sake of having a meeting? Full stack teams
can focus on the areas that provide value and remove unnecessary waste from
the process of delivering that value. It is another example of the 80-20 rule. The
full stack team should commit 80% of its efforts to the 20% of the project that
matters most.
So, is the full stack team an IT utopia? And more importantly, is a full stack
team what every organization should strive to achieve? The answer to both
questions is: it depends. Your organization might not be a cloud unicorn or
operate in the brave new DevOps world. You might not have the need for teams
that are agile and self-sufficient, although every team should still be empow-
ered, held accountable for the results of its work and focus on producing value.
At Cloud Technology Partners we certainly believe in the value of full stack
teams to solve the complex public cloud challenges our clients give us. Putting
together a cross-functional and empowered full stack team of experts has
proven to be the best way to quickly deliver the value clients expect.
SUMMER 2018 | THE DOPPLER | 47