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
2
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
5
People
Language
Food
Beliefs
Values
World views
Behaviours
Preferences
Communication
styles
Relationship patterns
… …
6
“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?
8
“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?
9
“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?
10
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
14
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