Proponents of open source technologies, especially Drupal, have a strong understanding of the collective effort required to achieve a very ambitious goal. We understand the need for shared vision, team collaboration and a strong sense of community. All to support what is essentially a large scale globally distributed self-organising team.

For those of us whose daily work life involves implementing such technologies do we apply a similar approach to our own projects? Is the self-organising team a reality, especially in a commercial or public sector Drupal services environment? If so, how well does self-organisation work in practice and what are the factors that underpin the formation of a successful team?

This session aims to:

• Focus on people as individuals and how to balance personality and behaviour for optimal outcomes.
• The concept of distributed leadership and project management over command and control.
• Define how much process is enough to support but not hinder a successful team.
• Look at how commercial realities and the pressure to deliver affect the ability to self organise.
• Discuss recruitment methods for creating self-organising teams.
• Define the effect of organisational culture on the motivation to self-organise.
• Explore if an agile approach combined with a strong self-organising team is the panacea for successful Drupal projects or just a utopian dream.
• Entertain with tales of Machiavellian treachery, brutal politics and cute furry animals.

BoF: A follow up discussion to this, and another related session on the Business Track, has been scheduled - https://amsterdam2014.drupal.org/bof/business-track-bof-new-ways-working