What Culture are you working with and how Agile is it?

© 2013 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com

What Organisational Culture are you working with

and how does it compare with Agile culture?

With Rowan Bunning, CST


Rowan Bunning• Background in object oriented & web dev. with

vendors, start-ups & consultancies

• Introduced to Agile practices over 10 years ago as: “the way good Smalltalkers develop software”

• Pioneer of Scrum in Australia

• Worked as an Agile Coach / ScrumMaster at a leading Agile consultancy in the U.K.

• Agile Coach in Australia

• Training in Australia and New Zealand• Certified ScrumMaster• Certified Scrum Product Owner• Effective User Stories• Agile Estimating and Planning• Agile for Teams


OutcomesA. Gain language for your organisation’s type of

culture.

B. Gain insights into characteristics of your organisation's core culture.

C. Gain insights into the difference between types of organisational culture.

D. Gain awareness of similarities and differences between your organisation's core culture and the culture represented by Agile and Scrum.


Workshop agenda

Activity Time-box

Introduction to Organisational Culture 5m

Activity: Culture Questionnaire 15m

Activity: Culture Characteristics 15m

Schneider’s Culture Model 20m

Activity: Manifesto Mapping 25m

Reflection & take aways 10m


What is organisational culture?

Thoughts?


How organisational culture has been described at this Gathering

“...Shared beliefs and values.”- Xavier Warsee

Paris Scrum Gathering 2013

“Stuff that people do without noticing.”- Henrick Kniberg

Paris Scrum Gathering 2013


Organisational Culture as per Schein

“a pattern of shared basic assumptions that a group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”

- Edgar H. Schein


Schein model of culture

- Edgar H. Schein via Jason Yip


More definitions...

“The behaviour of humans who are part of an organisation and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organisation values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits”

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisational_culture

“A set of shared mental assumptions that guide interpretation and action in organisations by defining appropriate behaviour for various situations”

- Ravasi and Schultz (2006)


Short and sweet definitions

“The personality of the organisation.”

“The operating system of the organisation.”

Source material

“the way we do things around here * in order to succeed.”

- William E. Schneider

Our definition for this workshop

* Underlined portion is as per Deal & Kennedy (2000)


Culture and management practices

“Culture establishes management practices. It fixes how an organisation plans its work, organises and coordinates activity, manages performance, and gets the results it deems important.”



Culture questionnaireINSTRUCTIONS:

1. Please grab a Core Culture Questionnaire.

2. Complete it including the results table on the last sheet.


What type of culture are you working in?

2. Please move to the table labelled with the core culture for which you identified the highest Total.

Question Core CultureCore CultureCore CultureCore Culture

ID I II III IV

NAME

INSTRUCTIONS:1. As we reveal the culture name, write it under

under the corresponding roman numeral.

Control Collaboration Competence Cultivation


Schneider culture modelActuality Oriented

Possibility Oriented

Organisation OrientedPeople Oriented

Control culture

Competence cultureCultivation culture

Collaboration culture

Reference: The Reengineering Alternative: A Plan for Making Your Current Culture Work by William E. Schneider (Apr 1994).


Control cultureLeadership focus

Management style

Organisational form

Role of employee

Task focus

Nature of power/authority

Decision making

Approach to managing change

Key norms

Climate

Authoritarian / directive, Maintain power

ConservativePolicy and procedure orientedHierarchy

Compliance, Adhere to role requirementsIndividuals stay within a functionRole/position titular*

Very thorough, Push for certainty

Mandate it, Resistance to change

Order, Certainty, Systematism

Serious, Restrained

* titular adj. having an important or impressive title but not having the power or duties that usually go with it



Competence cultureLeadership focus

Management style

Organisational form

Role of employee

Task focus

Nature of power/authority

Decision making


Key norms

Climate

Standard setter, Taskmaster

Task driven, Rational/analytical

Matrix adhocracy

Be an expertFunction independently

Specialist

Expertise

Very analytical, Formal logic

Achievement goals drive changeOpen to change

Professionalism, Meritocracy

Competitive, Intense paceReference: The Reengineering Alternative: A Plan for Making Your Current Culture Work by William E. Schneider (Apr 1994).


Cultivation cultureLeadership focusManagement style

Organisational form

Role of employee

Task focusNature of power/authority

Decision makingApproach to managing

change

Key norms

Climate

Catalyst, Empower / enable peoplePeople driven, Nurturant

Wheel-like circular lattice

Express yourselfBe willing to change, develop, growFunctionalist, Generalist & SpecialistCharismaParticipative, Organic / evolutionaryEmbrace / assume changeChange is automaticHumanistic, Growth and developmentFreedom to make mistakesLively / magnetic, Caring



Collaboration cultureLeadership focusManagement style

Organisational form

Role of employee

Task focusNature of power/authority

Decision making


Key norms

Climate

Team builder, CoachCollegial, DemocraticGroup clusterCollaborate. Be a team player.Utilise others as resourcesGeneralistRelationshipExperimental. Lots of brainstorming.TrustingTeam calls for changeOpen to change

Synergy, Egalitarianism

Esprit de corps/camaraderieReference: The Reengineering Alternative: A Plan for Making Your Current Culture Work by William E. Schneider (Apr 1994).


If Agile is culture

...what sort of culture is it?


Created at Paris Scrum Gathering

Agile Manifesto value/principle Scrum value /

ScrumMaster responsibility

Software Craftsmanship

manifesto value

Kanban method principle/property






From LAST Melbourne August 2013

Agile Manifesto value/principle

Scrum value / ScrumMaster responsibility

Kanban method principle/property

Software Craftsmanship

manifesto value


Culture Change“In any industry, the better-performing organisations had cultures that were congruent with their environment. Wholesale culture change is required when an organisation’s core culture is inherently inconsistent with the true nature of its enterprise.”


"Many organisations that dive rapidly into Agile find cultural norms already in place that tend to constrain progress and hold them back."

- Dan Mezick, The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager.


Is culture change the holy grail of Agile transformation?

Cultural Chan!


Case study: quotes from client A

"The biggest change I've seen is to our culture."

- Head of R&D at a client after 6 months of Agile Coaching

“Improvement in quality.”

“A lot of enthusiasm. People contributing more in meetings.”

“A lot more interaction between team members - people feel a lot more empowered.”

“Much easier to see the progress. We can take measurements every couple of weeks and see the progress.”

“Test cases reviewed already [as they are created.]”

“Helping to focus on the tasks at hand because of the short sprints and it doesn't turn into a huge job.”

“[The Architect] is a lot more on top of the work that is being done”


Culture at start of engagement B

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Control"culture" Collabora3on"culture" Competence"culture" Cul3va3on"culture"

March"19,"2013"

Project(Team(Core(Culture("


Client B survey 5 months later

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Control"culture" Collabora3on"culture" Competence"culture" Cul3va3on"culture"

March"19,"2013"August"8,"2013"

Project(Team(Core(Culture(

Where are the culture change Knobs?

Agile Overview © 2012 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com

Leadership


Larman's 4 laws of organisational behaviour

1. Organisations are implicitly optimised to avoid changing the status quo middle- and first-level manager and “specialist” positions & power structures.2. As a corollary to (1), any change initiative will be reduced to overloading the new terminology to mean basically the same as status quo.3. As a corollary to (1), any significant change initiative will be derided as “purist” and “needing customisation for local concerns” -- which deflects from addressing weaknesses and manager/specialist status quo.4. Culture follows structure.

See: www.craiglarman.com/wiki/index.php?title=Larman%27s_Laws_of_Organizational_Behavior

http://www.craiglarman.com/wiki/index.php?title=Larman%27s_Laws_of_Organizational_Behavior

http://www.craiglarman.com/wiki/index.php?title=Larman%27s_Laws_of_Organizational_Behavior

Agile Overview © 2012 Scrum WithStyle scrumwithstyle.com

Culture changethrough structural change

ROI Delivery

Scrum

HowWhat

Improvement

Develop the right thing

Develop the thing right

Work together well

Product Owner Team

ScrumMaster

Stakeholders Users

Management

Hierarchical Scrum


Culture Change Model

Results

Actions

Principles

Values

Beliefs

Experiences

Become

Inform

Reference: Dan Mezick, The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager, FreeStanding Press, 2012.


Recommended readingThe Reengineering Alternative: A Plan for Making Your Current Culture Work by William E. Schneider (Apr 1994).

The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager by Mezick, Daniel (Jul 17, 2012).

Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework by Kim S. Cameron and Robert E. Quinn (Mar 29, 2011).

Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein (Aug 16, 2010).

The main reference for this workshop.

www.scrumwithstyle.com

[email protected]: @rowanb

au.linkedin.com/in/rowanbunning

Rowan Bunning

Image credit: Hugh MacLeod aka gapingvoid

http://www.scrumwithstyle.com

http://www.scrumwithstyle.com

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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What Culture are you working with and how Agile is it?