It's that time again. This week's Art of Agile Development excerpt is Collective Code Ownership. An underrated practice that's at the heart of team success.

It's really more than code ownership, which we didn't emphasize enough in the book. To be successful as a truly self-organizing team, the way I teach it--without requiring a technical lead, a development manager, or a Scrum Master--the team has to have the ability to solve problems without explicit direction. This requires group ownership and good group decision-making skills. This doesn't magically happen on its own; teams have to work at it. But I think it's an essential part of what makes good Agile teams great.

Next week's excerpt comes from the Planning chapter and there's still time to vote on which excerpt I'll post. After that, on June 4th, comes the always-popular Developing chapter. Which section should I post next?

Poll closed.

Here are the full results of the poll for this week's excerpt:

• Version Control - 9%
• Ten-Minute Build - 23%
• Continuous Integration - 23%
• Collective Code Ownership - 27%
• Documentation - 18%