We talk a lot about the virtues of autonomous teams. In fact, the whole point of a microservices architecture to enable team autonomy.
But autonomous teams still follow the overall mission and standards. It’s precisely following the mission and standard that make autonomy possible.
One of the pivotal moments in military doctrine history was the realization that units didn’t have to run every change in condition through their central command. Armies that required this couldn’t react fast enough to changing conditions and so units were empowered to react.
This only worked because the units were keyed into the commander’s intent. You couldn’t have units running off carrying out their own missions.
You’ve achieved autonomy when anyone at the org would make the same decision given the same circumstances. Autonomy is born out of unity in purpose and practice.
