four principles, four cultures, one mirror
TRANSCRIPT
Four Principles,Four Cultures,One Mirror
Israel Gat
Agile RootsSalt Lake City, UT
June 16, 2009
Timeless PrinciplesIntrinsic Obstacles
Obstacles Experienced in my Agile Journey
• Individuals and interactions • over processes and tools
– Re-crossing the chasm between customer and vendor
– The “Sausage Syndrome”
Obstacles Experiencedin my Agile Journey
• Working software • over comprehensive documentation
– License revenues versus service revenues: up to a 1:4 ratio
– The economics of replacing enterprise software in mature markets
Obstacles Experiencedin my Agile Journey
• Customer collaboration • over contract negotiation
– How do you “codify” Agile principles in contracts based on mutual worst case assumptions?
– Technical debt
Obstacles Experiencedin my Agile Journey
• Responding to change • over following a plan
– The market development myth– The primary vehicle by which things happen
A Worrisome Perspective “I estimate that 75% of those organizations
using Scrum will not succeed in getting the benefits that they hope for from it… The intention of Scrum is to make [their dysfunctions] transparent so the organization can fix them. Unfortunately, many organizations change Scrum to accommodate the inadequacies or dysfunctions instead of solving them.”
[AgileCollab Interview with Ken Schwaber, February 19, 2009]
Remember This Figure
• By rolling out Agile, you create a systemic duality and possibly a conflict
– Culture = “how we do things around here in order to succeed” [Schneider, 1994]
– The Agile Manifesto=“how we do software in order to succeed”
Hypothesis: Cultural Duality
Cultural Considerations
Taxonomy of Core Cultures
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Actuality
Impersonal
Possibility
Personal
Collaboration•Affiliation
•Family/Athletic team•Nurse
Control•Power•Military•Surgeo
n
Competence•Achievement•University•Research scientist
Cultivation•Self-actualization
•Religious institutions
•Minister, priest, rabbi Source [Schneider, 1994]
Culture to an Organization is
like Character to an Individual
• “Individuals and corporate personality are constituted in much the same way. Both are living forces characterized by energy and direction… Each corporation has a psychic center, too, which consists of the beliefs, values, mission, attitudes and objectives that determine its-long term direction and short-term goals”[Harmon & Jacobs, 1985]
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Agile Rollout Strategies
Rollout Strategy #1• Build on strengths of the
current culture•“… culture is singularly persistent… changing [organizational] behavior works only if it can be based on the existing ‘culture.’” [Drucker, 1991]
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Rollout Strategy #1• Build on strengths of the
current culture•“… culture is singularly persistent… changing [organizational] behavior works only if it can be based on the existing ‘culture.’” [Drucker, 1991]
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There is always a Duck…
Rollout Strategy #2
• Move toward an adjacent culture
•“A decade is a short period of time in which to expect to institutionalize cultural changes within a large organization.” [Denison, 1990]
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Rollout Strategy #3
• Move toward an opposite culture
•Unlikely to succeed within a formed culture even if you are the company founder...
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Schwaber’s 75% Failure Rate
• For any culture:• One cultural identity• Two adjacent cultures• One opposite culture
• ¾=75%
Scaling and Culture
Scale Up
• Likely to be least disruptive up to a point – you will probably stay within the culture in which you already demonstrated success
• Furthermore, you are likely to be able to use the same Agile infrastructure
Scale Out• In this era you are likely to be
adding local culture(s) into the mix – Bangalore, Beijing, Moscow, Sao Paolo, etc.
• The various variants of Distributed Agile might not be optimal, but their use is inevitable in an era characterized by off-shoring and outsourcing
• Key to success is minimizing implementation variances against the Manifesto principles
Scale “Diagonally”• Leveraging Agile success in R&D to
drive change in downstream functions is an effective strategy…
• … as long as you are mindful of the cultural boundaries you are crossing
• Typical border crossing:R&D Marketing Sales
Finance
Limit on Scaling
• You can’t effectively scale up, scale out or scale diagonally beyond the joint infrastructure that serves constituencies which are affected by Agile• The data the culture pays attention
to• The process by which decisions are
made
“xi” releaseMarketing Release
Train
“uber” release
R1 60-90 days 60-90 days 60-90 days 60-90 daysR2 R3 R4 R5
Example from BMC Software Circa 2006: Diagonal Scaling, Multiple Constituencies, Joint Manual Tools
R&D Release Train
Engineering & Product Management Driven Frequency
Market Driven Frequency
“beta” release
“maintenance” release
Collaborative
Asynchronous
GTM Processes
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Fairest Organization of Them All?
Using Your Mirror• Look at the organizational mirror to
determine your core culture• Whatever your current culture
might be, it is easier to build on its strengths than to try to change it
• No single culture is right for Agile• (Note: this is different from a
culture being a good fit for a certain endeavor)
Behavioral Changes through Tools
• Good Agile tools are likely to induce behavioral changes (in good time) without necessitating a big cultural push
– The data dimension: Single source of truth
– The process dimension: Natural and automatic – like the response to an exciting video game
Principles for Applying
Timeless Principles
Know Thyself
•Subtleties of culture • over • the fine points of • one Agile method versus another
Be True to Thyself
• Build on the strengths of
•your culture• versus• trying to quickly change it
Behavioral ChangesThrough Tools
•Joint Agile infrastructure
• over• explicit cultural change
pushes
Other Cultures arePart of your Mirror
• “The essence of organizational health is Cultural Balance, a condition in which the tendency toward excess that characterizes any ‘pure’ organizational culture is mitigated by the opposing tendencies of the other cultures”
[Harrison, 1987]
