For Some Places More Than Others - Agility and Organizational Culture

Abstract

The adoption of agile methods for software development has proven to be an activity sensitive to the culture of the organizations seeking to adopt them. Agile projects occur in different situations: from the most ideal to those that require extensive adaptations. This study aims to explore the relationship between selected basic cultural assumptions of organizations and agile practices. Correlations identified were explored looking to offer an initial map suggesting approaches to introduce agile practices based on the cultural profile of the organization. The most notable results were that basic cultural assumptions of “Pragmatism”, “Favors communication” and “Collegial/participative” are the ones most correlated with agile practices and the practices of “co-location”, “Test Driven Development”, “Continuous Integration”, “Code refactoring”, “pair programming” and “Stand-up meeting” showed no representative correlations with basic cultural assumptions, indicating that they may be a good alternative to start an agile adoption by technical practices. One of the main contributions of this work is proposing a preliminary model that highlights the relationship between organizational culture and adoption of agile practices, suggesting areas for further research.

Appendix A – Survey Questionnaire

Culture and Agile Practices

Please answer the questions below based on your experience in past and present ThoughtWorks projects you’ve been involved. Your name and the client/project information will be kept private and used only for data aggregation and to calculate response rate. Please feel free to leave feedback, remarks or describe a case of particular interest in the field available at the end of the form. Thanks for your time!

Project profile

The next few questions will be used to identify the project characteristics for aggregate analysis:

Client’s experience with Agile: No experience 1 2 3 4 5 Experienced practitioners

Client’s satisfaction with Agile: Extremely frustrated 1 2 3 4 5 Extremely satisfied

Did the project finish on target and on budget? Yes/No/Not finished/I don’t know

Client Organization Culture

For the following questions, please answer what, in your opinion, best reflects the attitudes, behaviors and beliefs of the group involved in the project from the client’s side.

Nature of Human Activity – 1.

Does the organization acts as if dominated by the environment it is part of, trying to find available niches and considering all external factors before doing anything (e.g.: they refuse to make any changes without consulting every stakeholder, like legal and design people)? Or the organization believes in its capacity to influence the market with their own effort, displaying a belief in progress regardless of what the current consensus is (e.g.: they try and release products they believe in, regardless of marketing surveys)?

$$ {\text{Environment}}\,{\text{dominant}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Organization}}\,{\text{dominant}} $$

Nature of Human Activity – 2.

Does the organization let its members act pro-actively and improve things even if it means making the environment unstable for everyone else sometimes (e.g.: They try many physical lay-outs until they find the one that is acceptable for everyone)? Or the organization expects its members to follow detailed instructions and act according to protocol, accepting their fate if something unexpected happens and the protocol breaks down (e.g.: They avoid updating their tech stack without many meetings and a detailed timeline)?

$$ {\text{Pro - active}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Reactive}},\,{\text{fatalistic}} $$

Nature of Reality and Truth.

Does the organization trusts the boss, local specialist or “the right way of doing things” to determine what is right when it is time to make a decision amid great uncertainty (e.g.: there is a methodology book that every one regards as the final arbitrator of any dispute)? Or the organization try to gather objective information and, in lack of those, believes that truth will come out of debate among everyone involved (e.g.: to make a decision, two or more members of the team explain their ideas and test it out to see what works best)?

$$ {\text{Moralistic}}\,{\text{Authority}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Pragmatism}} $$

Nature of Space.

Does the organization adopts a working environment that favors private conversation, avoiding disrupting anybody with conversations that are not pertinent to the whole group, and only releasing information in a need-to-know basis (e.g.: the boss have people come to his office when he wants to talk to them and interrupting a colleague without permission is an offense)? Or the organization adopts a working environment that makes the fast exchange of ideas easy at the expense of individual privacy (e.g.: the team – including the boss – shares a common working area and the group is all facing the centre of the room when possible)?

$$ {\text{Allowing}}\,{\text{privacy}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Allowing}}\,{\text{communication}} $$

Nature of Time – 1.

Is the organization normally focused in the near future, using a quarterly or annual goal as benchmark for decision-making (e.g.: they postpone a change until after the current release in order to avoid risking it)? Or the organization normally looks to past experiences when looking for solutions for a problem (e.g.: they do not adopt a given methodology because they tried before and it didn’t work)? An intermediate position would be focus on the task at hand, without looking into long-term consequences or previous experiences.

$$ {\text{Near}}\,{\text{future}}\,{\text{orientation}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Past}}\,{\text{orientation}} $$

Nature of Time – 2.

Does the organization favors a long term vision (months or years) and don’t worry too much about small delays (e.g.: they are fine with a complex task taking longer than expected and are willing to negotiate the consequent delay in order to do the right thing). Or the organization plan activities with a short time frame (days or weeks) and consider small delays a big issue (e.g.: holding weekly status meetings where every delay is immediately looked into)?

$$ {\text{Long}}\,{\text{time}}\,{\text{units}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Short}}\,{\text{time}}\,{\text{units}} $$

Nature of Human Nature – 1.

Does the organization believes that people are intrinsically good and, when properly motivated, will exceed expectations when performing the tasks they are responsible for (e.g.: they do not demand results, focusing on making sure everyone has all the resources necessary to do the job)? Or the organization believes people is intrinsically bad and believe people will misbehave if given the opportunity (e.g.: an organization that has cameras everywhere to make ensure security and good behavior)?

$$ {\text{Humans}}\,{\text{are}}\,{\text{basically}}\,{\text{good}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Humans}}\,{\text{are}}\,{\text{basically}}\,{\text{evil}} $$

Nature of Human Nature – 2.

Does the organization believe that people are what they are and can’t change their nature regardless of any context changes (e.g.: the organization prefers to postpone a meeting then let someone represent somebody else that is out sick)? Or the organization believes people can change, adapting to different roles depending on the situation and/or the way they are treated (e.g.: the organization lets a user pair with a developer if the user believes he can help that way)?

$$ {\text{Human}}\,{\text{nature}}\,{\text{is}}\,{\text{fixed}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Human}}\,{\text{nature}}\,{\text{is}}\,{\text{malleable}} $$

Nature of Human Relations – 1.

Does the organization believes that all good things come from the group and members strive for conformity (e.g.: people frequently ask everybody else’s opinion before deciding on trivial things)? Or the organization believes that individual talent is the solution for any problem (e.g.: if somebody works all night alone to do a nasty hack to fix an issue in production, then he or she is praised as an example)?

$$ {\text{Group}}\,{\text{as}}\,{\text{center}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Individual}}\,{\text{as}}\,{\text{center}} $$

Nature of Human Relations – 2.

Is the authority in the organization determined by context, with the boss deferring to the group members’ experience to assign power according to the situation (e.g.: the input of skilled engineers holds more weight in the decisions regarding the tech stack)? Or the organization believes in a strong hierarchy where power and influence are a consequence of each person’s relative status (e.g.: no matter how obvious a solution is, it must be cleared with the boss first)?

$$ {\text{Collegial}}/{\text{Participative}}\, 1\, 2\, 3\, 4\, 5\,{\text{Authoritarian}}/{\text{paternalistic}} $$

Agile practices adoption

In the table below, please check the option that matches your perception of the client’s team skill level in each given practice in the last day of the project.

Agile practices mastery levels

If a particular practice wasn’t tried/does not apply in the project you are describing or the scale doesn’t fit, leave that row unanswered. Mastery levels based on Cockburn (2000), Boehm and Turner (2003) and Sato et al. (2006).

	May have technical skills but unable or unwilling to collaborate or follow shared methods	With training, able to perform procedural method steps	With training, able to perform discretionary method steps	Able to tailor a method to fit a precedented new situation	Able to revise a method (break its rules) to fit an unprecedented new situation
Release planing
Use of stories
Frequent releases
Client participation
Morale
Colocation
TDD
CI
Sustainable pace
Refactoring
Whole team
Pair Programming
Simple design
Incremental design
Minimal documentation
Shared understanding
Stand-ups
Information Radiators
Retrospective/self-improvement