where is agile going withculture

Where is Agile Going?

Johanna RothmanNew: Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects

@johannarothmanwww.jrothman.com

jr@jrothman.com781-641-4046

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

What is Your Biggest Challenge With Agile in Your Organization Right Now?

2

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Where Do You Think Agile Is?

3

© 2011 Johanna Rothman4

Let Me Ask You For Some Data

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Adoption: Breadth Not Depth

5

People say the words, and don’t do the work

--source: http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/

feature/Agile-methodology-adoption-in-decline

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Intent Has Crossed the Chasm

6

Refactor!Iteration!

TDD! Story!

Retrospective!

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Has Agile Crossed the Chasm?

Where are you going?

How well are you delivering product to your customers?

How well is your organization treating you?

7

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Tests Can Bring Malicious Compliance

8

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Dig a Little Deeper

6,7,8-week iterations

Demo? We don’t need no stinkin’ demos

Handoff to QA

TDD doesn’t work here

Continuous integration doesn’t work here

<...> doesn’t work here

9

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

The Technical Challenges

Agile in the large

Product owners: Overloaded operators?

Project portfolio management

Team creation

Management == leadership

A true agile culture

10

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Agile Means Personal and Cultural Change

11

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Agile Encourages Personal Change

If you build in “inspect and adapt” into your work, you

build in the growth mindset

12

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Agile Requires Cultural Change

13

Each organization has its own culture

Managers and technical leads imprint their cultural

beliefs on top of the organizational culture

People imprint their personal beliefs on top of that

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

Fixed mindset => talent is all you need

Growth mindset => start with reasonable people, and

that people can learn

This changes how you hire, how you create teams, how

you manage “resources”

Growth mindset managers and leads no longer need

experts; they believe in generalizing specialists

14

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Power Distance

Large power distance: people expect to be told what to

do

Small power distance: People expect to take on their own

work

What happens if you have middle managers who believe in

large power distance with agile teams?

15

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Uncertainty Avoidance

Strong uncertainty avoidance: strong need for rules and

regulations. Proceed with change carefully

Weak uncertainty avoidance: strong belief in common

sense. Tolerance for ambiguity and chaos

What happens if you have managers with strong

uncertainty avoidance?

16

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

“Masculinity”

Masculinity: Personal recognition

Femininity: Work with a cooperative team

How do you do bonuses? How do you do recognition in a

masculine environment? Who games the system? When

do you attack the system?

17

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

What Are the Implications?

Difficult transitions for management and across the

organization

Differing mindset beliefs

Differing power distance cultures

Differing uncertainty avoidance beliefs

Differing masculinity values

18

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

What Would Post-Agile Look Like?

19

Agile in the large

Real product ownership

Project portfolio management

Team creation

Management == leadership

A true agile culture

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Agile in the Large

Program management

Geographically distributed agile

“Such investment will break our economic model”

“Pay me now or pay me later”

Agile architecture

20

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Project Portfolio Management

“Resource managers” might be the worst thing that has

happened in management

Optimization at the person level instead of optimization

at the organization level

Work has to flow through teams

Eliminate multitasking

21

Commit, Kill, Transform?

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Team Creation

People have to learn to how to become a self-organized

team

22

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Management == Leadership

23

Management create the environment in which teams flourish

Communities of Practice

Managers can coach, provide meta feedback

Project management

Lead the hiring effort

Iterative strategic planning

Project portfolio management

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Crossing the Chasm is a Cultural Change Issue

24

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

Where Are You Going?

25

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

What is Your Biggest Challenge With Agile in Your Organization Right Now?

26

© 2011 Johanna Rothman

References and More Reading

Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House, 2006.

Hofstede, Geert, Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael Minkov, Cultures and

Organizations : Software for the Mind, Third Edition, McGraw Hill, 2010.

Look for my upcoming program management book, tentatively titled Agile

& Lean Program Management: Collaborating Across the Organization

Tons more on jrothman.com

If you’d like me to stay in touch with you, please sign up for my email

newsletter, fill out a yellow form, or email me.

I’ll be putting these slides up on slideshare

27