Curious: for those of you have worked at orgs which use the concept of Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI), how well has it worked? What's been good? Bad? Other?
A thoughtful old article from : quora.com/Apple-company/
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It was an essential mechanism for abstraction at Apple: many people work on many projects; you need a single point of contact and responsibility. Hard to compose many projects without—contact us too diffuse. KA tried a finer-grained model, but it often just confused things.
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It’s more appropriate for bounded, execution-oriented work, rather than open-ended creative work. In the latter context concentrating ownership can be premature; can discourage surprising ideas from individuals during generative phases.
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Agreed. DRIs were a means to assign responsibility and authority as a package once it had been decided we wanted a specific project accomplished in a given time frame. It makes less sense to have a DRI for an ill-defined thing that doesn’t have a ship date.
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Actually I think your story about the invention of the iOS keyboard is a great example here. During the great keyboard bake-off, there was no DRI; everyone’s trying to figure out a model. But then yours won, and it become plan of record, and then you’re keyboard DRI.
I suspect the DRI was Scott. The DRI is not the one doing the job, he is the one pushing and organizing to get a result. The role of the DRI is to remind everyone what the goal is, and remove roadblocks. Nothing more.
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