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Hmh, I don't have a case study at hand, but there are many reports (and management self-help literature) where teams are shown to be the superior approach to co

Hmh, I don't have a case study at hand, but there are many reports (and management self-help literature) where teams are shown to be the superior approach to complex situations, especially in software development. Furthermore, considering that there are only about 50 identified open source projects out there with a BDFL [1] and only a few of them are clearly best-of-breed, while there are many best-of-breed projects that do not use a BDFL I'd wager that the perceived superiority of BDFL can at least in part be attributed to the perennial hero worshiping we like to do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life

flohofwoe 2y ago
Any tiny project on Github, Gitlab, ... which is maintained by one person but accepts PRs and feedback from outside contributors is essentially a BDFL project. The single project owner decides what goes and doesn't go into the project by merging or rejecting PRs. People are still free to maintain their own forks with contributions that are not accepted into the main version. In a way, the entire Github workflow is built around the idea of BDFL managed projects.
- fsloth 2y ago
  IMHO - No - having individual contributor workflows is diffenrent thing than aligning 10 people. The question is not who gets to do the decisions but how the team aligns itself and coordinates. It’s an accurate observation that single contributor projects work well since then there is no need to spend effort in coordination and communication.
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    > The question is not who gets to do the decisions but how the team aligns itself and coordinates. ...IMHO it's the other way around, somebody needs to do the difficult and unpopular decisions exactly for those hopefully rare situations where the self-coordination within a team fails (and doing that in a way that doesn't piss off people in the team). In the end, contributors to an open source project are also just a very loosely coupled team. 'Unpopular' decisions are much easier to do in projects that have a universally accepted and respected BDFL (ideally the project founder) than in most 'commercial' teams led by random 'management-caste' peeps.
fsloth 2y ago
“many reports (and management self-help literature) where teams are shown to be the superior approach” Isn’t the manager himself the BDFL - or a part of a BDFL led chain of command - for the team he is empowering in this case? He does not give out the organizational governance-authority just by empowering the team. Having a BDFL does not imply micromanagement or not empowering teams. It’a a different granularity role than implementing day-to-day issues. There are people who are really talented leaders. The problem are bad leaders - not the governance model IMO. And this is not a “no true scotsman” argument since effective leadership is a documented and observable phenomenon. Lack of authority is probably better than poor leadership but not better than good leadership (e.g. legendary John Kelly of Skunkworks fame for an fairly well documented example).
- Propelloni 2y ago
  Good point, and I wholly agree that there are really good leaders out there. But I wasn't trying to say that leaders are necessarily bad. I was trying to say that BDFL setups are not necessarily "the best" and there are good reasons to think that other forms of governance have just as good or even better track records. We do not talk about them that much because, I think, we just like hero stories and they are easier to tell with BDFL than with groups.

flohofwoe 2y ago

Any tiny project on Github, Gitlab, ... which is maintained by one person but accepts PRs and feedback from outside contributors is essentially a BDFL project. The single project owner decides what goes and doesn't go into the project by merging or rejecting PRs. People are still free to maintain their own forks with contributions that are not accepted into the main version. In a way, the entire Github workflow is built around the idea of BDFL managed projects.

fsloth 2y ago
IMHO - No - having individual contributor workflows is diffenrent thing than aligning 10 people. The question is not who gets to do the decisions but how the team aligns itself and coordinates. It’s an accurate observation that single contributor projects work well since then there is no need to spend effort in coordination and communication.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  > The question is not who gets to do the decisions but how the team aligns itself and coordinates. ...IMHO it's the other way around, somebody needs to do the difficult and unpopular decisions exactly for those hopefully rare situations where the self-coordination within a team fails (and doing that in a way that doesn't piss off people in the team). In the end, contributors to an open source project are also just a very loosely coupled team. 'Unpopular' decisions are much easier to do in projects that have a universally accepted and respected BDFL (ideally the project founder) than in most 'commercial' teams led by random 'management-caste' peeps.

fsloth 2y ago

“many reports (and management self-help literature) where teams are shown to be the superior approach” Isn’t the manager himself the BDFL - or a part of a BDFL led chain of command - for the team he is empowering in this case? He does not give out the organizational governance-authority just by empowering the team. Having a BDFL does not imply micromanagement or not empowering teams. It’a a different granularity role than implementing day-to-day issues. There are people who are really talented leaders. The problem are bad leaders - not the governance model IMO. And this is not a “no true scotsman” argument since effective leadership is a documented and observable phenomenon. Lack of authority is probably better than poor leadership but not better than good leadership (e.g. legendary John Kelly of Skunkworks fame for an fairly well documented example).

Propelloni 2y ago
Good point, and I wholly agree that there are really good leaders out there. But I wasn't trying to say that leaders are necessarily bad. I was trying to say that BDFL setups are not necessarily "the best" and there are good reasons to think that other forms of governance have just as good or even better track records. We do not talk about them that much because, I think, we just like hero stories and they are easier to tell with BDFL than with groups.