Silos and Value Streams

An alternative word for department is silo, to use a common metaphor. Brandolini says that “Silos do excel in one thing: they minimize the amount of learning needed for newcomers,” or, expressed in the reverse way, they “Maximize the overall ignorance within an organization.” Every organization is made up of silos to some extent, degrading its effectiveness, eroding its margins, or – in the worst cases – dooming it to fail. “The really nasty trait of silos is their asymmetry; they’re easy to establish, and really hard to remove.”

Note

All the quotes in this appendix are from Alberto Brandolini’s book. Alberto Brandolini is an entrepreneur, consultant, developer, teacher, public speaker, and author. He has been coding since 1982, and his skillset encompasses topics such as Agile, Domain-Driven Design, Lean, Complexity, Management 3.0, and “everything needed in order to solve the...