Full Stack Faction

Background

My employer had been going through a several year long restructuring to arrange the development teams as product teams to allow for cross-discipline collaboration. This process was successful, but meant that full stack developers may no longer have easy access to Full Stack Developers in other product teams.

Guilds

After discussing this concern I had, I worked to establish a cross-team discipline specific guild, that would eventually self identify as the Full Stack Faction. The idea of guilds was not new for my employer, as a successful UX Guild was established before the Full Stack Faction, however no such guild existed for Full Stack Developers.

Achievements

Some of the notable outcomes of this guilds creation was the successful roll-out of a new user interface theme and navigation package that would have faced much more resistance without close collaboration between the Full Stack Developers.

Challenges

Encouraging collaboration between members of the Full Stack Faction proved challenging. When a specific problem needed addressing, or a member of the Full Stack Faction had an issue needing assistance, collaboration occurred without prompting. However, when collaboration was needed on less well specified issues, my personal limits as a leader were challenged.

Almost Two Years

After the Full Stack Faction being run for almost two years now, and has seen members leave and new members join, we have continued to iterate on the structure of the Full Stack Faction as a group, always working to keep it relevant and useful as a collaborative tool.

Future

As the organisation continues to improve its development practice, and to take on significant projects such as a unified Design System, the Full Stack Faction will continue to have an important role at my employer, and I will continue to pay an important role in the Full Stack Faction while my contribution is needed.