Making the organization culture work for you!

Ebin John.

Agenda• Impact of Organization culture on Agile

Adoption– Understanding Schneider model

• Understanding your Organization culture– Understanding you company culture

• How to decide the model– How to identify the model that works!

• How to make the culture work for you

All models are wrong, but some are useful! :George Box

All models are useful, but some fail faster than others :Jurgen Appelo

• Learning how to make a decent cofee is adoption ; Becoming a barista is a transformation.

• Adoption changes only what you do. Transformation changes what you are.

• The Agile community suffers a significant confusion between adoption and transformation.

• Sadly, majority of the change agents talk of adopting Agile and not about transforming the culture of a company to support the Agile mindset.

• It requires understanding the current culture• Applying different models• Adapting new ideas to fit in traditional contexts• Shortening feedback cycles• Addressing both the people and their environment• Alternating between continuous change and radical

change• Experimenting in safe-to-fail ways• Lots of coffee

What it takes?

The Schneider Culture Model defines four distinct cultures:

1. Collaboration culture is about working together

2. Control culture is about getting and keeping control

3. Competence culture is about being the best4. Cultivation culture is about learning and

growing with a sense of purpose.

Culture Model Lets Us Ask Useful Questions

• What is the culture in my company now?• How well is the culture aligned with Agile?• What problems can I expect due to

misalignment?

• The first step in mitigating a problem is to acknowledge that you have one.

• If you do not manage culture, it manages you.

Source: An Agile Adoption and Transformation Survival Guide By Michael Sahota

Software Craftsmanship is about Competence

• We as a community of software professionals do need to pay attention to Competence and technical excellence for long term sustainability.

• The main sentiment is about working together with customers to produce valuable software that solves real problems.

• Not just code monkeys!

Working with Your Culture

Source: An Agile Adoption and Transformation Survival Guide By Michael Sahota

Making the culture work!

• Control Culture –> Lead with Kanban• Competence Culture –> Lead with Software

Craftsmanship• Collaboration or Cultivation Culture –> Lead

with aspects of Agile that align with the organizations culture. e.g. Vision and Retrospectives for Cultivation Culture.

Understanding Culture

• The implication here is that it is not possible to just switch over from a Control culture to an Agile one.

• A central premise of Schneider’s book is that it is essential to work with the existing culture rather than oppose it.

suggestions for using cultural information to guide decision-making:• Evaluate key problems in the context of culture.

Sometimes changes are needed to bring the culture into alignment with the core culture.

• Sometimes the culture is too extreme (e.g. too much Cultivation without any controls – or vice versa!), and elements from other cultures are needed to bring it back into balance.

• Consider the possibility of creating interfaces/adapters/facades to support mismatches between departments or groups.

Working with Other Cultures

• Option #1 illustrates that the easiest option is to work with the existing dominant culture (in this case Control).

• Option #2 is to carefully explore adjacent cultures in ways that support the core culture of the group.

• The idea here is to work with the culture, and not to fight against it.

Source: An Agile Adoption and Transformation Survival Guide By Michael Sahota

Adoption of Agile Practices in Mismatched Culture

• The guidance provided by Schneider is to identify practices that support the dominant culture of the company or group rather than to try and change it.

• It is all about making your culture work.

Summary

• Schneider Culture Model – an easy-to-use tool for assessing culture in your company.

• You can use the cultural fit model to decide what approach - Agile, Kanban, or Software Craftsmanship - will best fit with your organization if you want to work with the existing culture.

Questions

Thank You

References• William Schneider’s book [Schneider - The Reengineering Alternative: A plan for

making your current culture work

References• William Schneider’s book [Schneider - The Reengineering

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