Alexey Krivitsky agiletrainings.eu/blog

krivitsky.com/блог

culture hacker’s guide

Studying how structural decisions impact behaviors, performance and org cultures

Alexey krivitsky Mediocre developer Bulldozing scrum master Kicking ass agile coach Certified scrum trainer Fat ski rider Lame bass guitarist

Mostly known in agile community for #lego4scrum.

Alexey Krivitsky agiletrainings.eu/blog

krivitsky.com/блог

Culture. Is it really given? •  “We are agile” •  “They just do agile” •  “Our culture is agile-friendly” •  “Scrum is foreign to that culture” •  “They have very strong waterfall culture” •  “Scrum creates unique culture” •  “After John left, they stopped Scrum” •  “They were not ready for agile” •  …

culture will eat your Strategy for breakfast

less.works/case-studies/ericson.html

“our Culture” is How we do things round here

The Chicken-egg dilemma: Culture <-> structure

EMERGING ORGANIZATION (“START-UP”)

LEGACY ORGANIZATION (“STABLE COMPANY”)

Beliefs and habits – culture of founders - shape structure. Flat vs. hierarchical, controlling vs. collaborating…

CULTURE shapes STRUCTURE

Existing structures (formed long ago) will try to sustain, reinforcing itself. More bureaucracy, policies, layers of indirection, roles...

STRUCTURE shapes CULTURE

So can we change cultures?

CULTURE

HABITS

BEHAVIORS

ENVIRONMENT

Joint Backlog refinement

Multi-team sprint planning

Inertia to change

Same structure New STRATEGY

existing CULTURE

Old habits reinforced

Old behaviors triggered

S.A.M.O.

“Culture follows structure”

new Structure introduced

existing culture

New culture

New Behaviors

emerge

New Habits stick

LaRman's law

Less.works and system thinking

What do mean by this, really?

“Culture follows structure”

If hell exists it looks like this.

How long does it take to add an edit field?

More Examples of structural decisions that have impact on the culture

“Culture follows structure”

#1: existence of a Platform team

TECHNICAL PLATFORM / ENGINE

CONSUMER PRODUCTS

Customer-facing teams doing platform work

TECHNICAL PLATFORM / ENGINE

CONSUMER PRODUCTS

#2: mobile teams with no back-ends skills

BACK-END

REST API

CORE FRONT-END MOBILE APPS

All teams working on back-end

BACK-END

CORE FRONT-END MOBILE APPS

#3: one product split into many sub-domains

Organize by customer value

Study system dynamics at play you may explore some of with these variables

Cycle time

#defects

Costs of���maintenance

#people

MotivationCode quality

#managers

Tech ���debt

VARIABLES

Cycle time

Quality

WIP

Cause-effect relationships

Quality Cycle time

WIPRework

reinforcing vs. balancing loops

BA

DC

BA

DC

Reinforcing « UNSTABLE »

Balancing « STABILIZING »

Delayed effects

QualityCycle time

WIPRework

Motivation

Quick fixes

Quality Cycle time

WIPRework

Motivation

Salary

VARIABLES to explore Product���quality

Product���time-to-market

Employee���happiness

Customer���satisfaction

Need for new ���rules and policies

Need for���managers

Thank you!

Questions? Complains? Tomatoes?

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