Managing Software for Growth: Without Fear, Control, and the Manufacturing Mindset

Getting What We Want at the End

When I say growing software, I mean participating in software's emergence. Growing software isn't dictating how it will emerge, or planning how it will emerge, or guiding it while it emerges, or even letting it emerge. In a sense, it is emerging with it. Growing software is based on the idea that the only way to get the software you want in the end is to start moving in that direction.

Great, but what does emergence mean? It means something completely unpredictable showing up that the team recognizes when they see it. They didn't know what it was when they started, and they can't tell anyone exactly when they'll arrive at this thing. It just shows up. In software terms,

Emergence means the self-organized, conversational ...