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The Agile Manifesto states: "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams." Yet the topic of self-organizing teams seems to barely deserve a mention at conferences or in articles (compare the number of references in the Agile Alliance's article index - the Project Management section vastly outweighs the Self-Organization section, and of the few articles in the latter not all seem to truly belong there.)

Is this because self-organizing teams are a no-brainer, such an easy strategy to set up that nothing much needs to be said about it ? I very much doubt it. The fact is, it seems completely paradoxical to propose something like self-organizing teams in the context of a discussion on development "processes". Mention "process", and the immediate associations are with management choosing, defining, and imposing a process; no team who is being told to follow a process can rightly be called self-organizing.

Still, the Manifesto's statement has always rung true to me. Teams who can achieve a purpose without the need for a leader's direction must be more effective than teams who require constant or even regular intervention on the part of a manager. The capabilities of an "externally organized" team will be constrained by the leadership skills and the availability of its manager; not so a self-organized team.

Together with Emmanuel Gaillot, I will be hosting a workshop at the XP2004 conference on the topic of self-organizing teams. My primary objective is to learn something about the subject; I expect and hope that every participant there will also find something to learn.

This is a call for participation, of sorts; if you're planning on coming to XP2004, you're welcome to register interest at the Wiki I've set up for that purpose.