Marine Corps-inspired leadership and planning for software teams
Many of the principles that make the US Marine Corps units (USMC) effective, translate directly to engineering teams.
On the surface, planning and leadership for warfighting may seem worlds apart from the realities of software engineering.
If you dive deeper you will see that the principles clarity of mission, adaptability, and empowered leadership are just as important for building software systems.
At this year’s code.talks, @André, Software Engineer at freiheit.com, shared the core elements of the USMC leadership philosophy and the Marine Corps Planning Process (MCPP).
Their philosophy is based on the idea of Auftragstaktik, a surprisingly modern management approach made popular in the 1860s and 1870s by the Prussian Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (the Elder). His ideas of Auftragstaktik are also guiding us how we run our organization at freiheit.com.