企业敏捷转型所面临的文化挑战Enterprise Cultural Challenges

To Agile Transition

王明兰

Enterprise Cultural Challenges

To Agile Transition

Wang Minglan

2012.06.07

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Agenda

Culture and Agile

Agile Challenges In Chinese Traditional Culture

Cases In Given Enterprise Culture

Ramp up – Do’s and Don’ts

Culture And Agile

Reflect A Bit - What Is Culture About

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People

Language

Food

Beliefs

Values

World views

Behaviours

Preferences

Communication

styles

Relationship patterns

… …

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“A way of life of a group of people. Culture is learned, not innate. Culture includes a group's shared

values, beliefs, behaviors, preferences, verbal and nonverbal

communication styles, relationship patterns..”

----- (Chen, Chan, Brekken, Lynch, Valverde 1998)

Culture And Agile

Do Dancers Understand Dance’s Essence?

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“My organization’s agile implementation

is pretty much mature. Every single team

is running with sprint cadence and daily

scrum smoothly. “ – A manager of a big

R&D department.

What you saw is people’s dancing and

singing, however do you know if dancers get

the essence of dance?

Introspect - Is the Value of Dance Achieved?

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“We have been dancing for years, why

performance indicators didn’t show the

improvement of time to market, quality, or even no clear sign of higher team moral?”

• Did silver bullet achieve your

target?

Cargo Cult – Can They Summon

God-like Aircraft?

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Agile Deployment: Way of Working or Way of

Thinking?

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Agile Deployment: Way Of Working Or Way Of

Thinking?

12

If we don’t change people’s thinking,

we will find transitioning activities are

stuck to the corner easily.

Behind Thinking : Culture

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Way of Working

Way of Thinking

Way of Being

Result

Behavior

Thinking

Culture

Agile Culture VS. Chinese Traditional Culture

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Traditional Chinese Culture

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Higher power distance

Command and control

Clearer boundary between each

other’s responsible areas

Lower power distance

Self management

Cross functional team

Traditional Chinese Culture

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Manager/Officer position as better

career path than engineers

Saving face

Grant responsibility

Over time work is somehow natural

Build project around motivated

individuals. Management as

supporting role.

Openness

Taking responsibility

Sustainable development

Common Elements

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Both promote being

adaptable and flexible.

However disciplines are

often forgotten in Chinese

companies.

Agile is not taking short cut!

Common Elements

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Both promote result

oriented and near goal

driven.

However long term

view of successful

products and portfolio

are often neglected in

Chinese companies.

Agile is not short-

sighted way of perusing

success!

Cases In Given Enterprise Culture

Case #1 – Hierarchical Towards Self-organizing

Team

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Product

Owner

Scrum

Master Developers

and Testers

Scrum Team In Definition

Product

Owner Scrum

Master

Developers

and Testers

Scrum Team from

People’s Perception

Product

Owner

Scrum

Master

Developers

and Testers

Is it strange, or familiar to you ?

Case #1 – Why

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Strong hierarchy culture in

the organization.

New roles of scrum

masters/PO are introduced when

the enterprise is transitioning to

agile; Meanwhile team

leaders/project managers step into

new roles.

Case #1 – How To Deal With It?

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Correct roles and

responsibility definitions

and misunderstandings.

Remove hierarchy. Make

PO/Scrum masters use

right leadership style.

Case #2– Command Control Towards Empowered Team

Is this something familiar to you :

Managers demand schedule to teams and

request detailed reports; Scrum Master

assign tasks to teams; Team members

report to scrum masters/PO.

Case #2– Why

Strong command control and

micromanagement culture in the

company.

Due to case #1, PO/Scrum Master

take this command control style

naturally, meanwhile teams accept

this style by default.

Case #2– How To Deal With It

Promote servant leadership.

“Serve first, lead second”.

Promote coach type of leadership.

Case #3 – Machinery Towards Interactions

Is this something familiar to you:

“robot army” organization. “robot A”

finishes his step then handovers to

“robot B”. If process instructions are

not available to operate, then robots

wait.

Case #3 – Why

Manufacturing culture.

Every human is a functioning

cogwheel being controlled and

adjusted.

Heavy processes and tools kill

people’s innovation and

interaction, passion, and

efficiency.

Case #3 – How To Deal With It

Adjust the balance among

people, process and tools.

Relieve people from heavy

processes and tools.

Promote individuals’

professionalism, e.g. software

craftsmanship

Case #3 – How To Deal With It

Discourage interactions through

processes and tools. Promote just-

in-time, and face to face

collaborations.

One word: Make

people truly become

human!!

Case #4 – Silos Towards Collaboration

Is this something familiar to you:

There is little interactions across

teams. When one team seeks for help

from others, it goes through from both

teams’ management escalation

channel.

Why

Overall strong “department silo”

bureaucracy culture.

Case #4 – How To Deal With It

Make common goal visible and

consistent across teams

Make the common goal the

foundation of achieving team goals

and individual goals.

Change to feature based teams if

teams are component based setup.

End-to-end responsibility enables

collaboration across teams.

Ramp Up

...Why...

...Way of Being...

...Consistant Vision...

...Explictly...

…Leadership

…upstream and downstream…

...Seeds

Evolve …

Do’s

Communicate clearly and repeatively on why to transit to agile.

Incorpate Way Of Thinking into Way Of Working Transition Program towards Way of

Being.

Provide consistant vision and direction across the organization

Repeat the voice of promoted culture explictly on daily basis, again and over

again.

Change managers first! Managers become road blockers if not shifting from

commanding and controlling to servant leading and coaching leadership.

change of the people in upstream and downstream of scrum teams

Open eyes, eudcate potential seeds to change themselves. Let the ”seeds”

influence others to embrace agile culture.

Help teams evolve in stead of predefining everything in PowerPoint then implement

Do’s

Go all in...

...one size...

...wrong people...

...titles...

Reorganize…

…regression…

…superficial…

…lose belief…

…Ignore disciplines…

Don’ts

Go all in overnight without piloting

Try one size fits all.

Nominate wrong people playing key roles in scrum teams.

Make key roles in scrum teams permantly with titles.

Reorganize teams frequently.

Let teams transitioning progress regress to old way of working and thinking.

Make scrum ceremonies become superficial as a result making agile essence

not exposed.

Make teams lose belief in agile

Let teams ignore disciplines when being flexible.

Don’ts