Culture or structure: the chicken-egg problem.

1. Alexey Krivitsky
agiletrainings.eu/blog
krivitsky.com/блог
culture hacker’s guide
Studying how structural decisions impact
behaviors, performance and org cultures

2. 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

3. 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”
• …

4. culture will eat your Strategy
for breakfast

5. less.works/case-studies/ericson.html
“our Culture” is
How we do things round here

6. 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

7. So can we change cultures?

8. CULTURE
HABITS
BEHAVIORS
ENVIRONMENT

9. Joint Backlog refinement

10. Multi-team sprint planning

11. Inertia to change
Same structure
New STRATEGY
existing
CULTURE
Old habits
reinforced
Old behaviors
triggered
S.A.M.O.

12. “Culture follows structure”
new
Structure
introduced
existing
culture
New
culture
New
Behaviors
emerge
New
Habits
stick
LaRman's law

13. Less.works and system thinking

14. What do mean by this, really?
“Culture follows structure”

15. If hell exists it looks like this.
How long does it take to add an edit field?

16. More Examples of structural decisions
that have impact on the culture
“Culture follows structure”

17. #1: existence of a Platform team
TECHNICAL PLATFORM / ENGINE
CONSUMER PRODUCTS

18. Customer-facing teams doing platform work
TECHNICAL PLATFORM / ENGINE
CONSUMER PRODUCTS

19. #2: mobile teams with no back-ends skills
BACK-END
REST API
CORE FRONT-END MOBILE APPS

20. All teams working on back-end
BACK-END
CORE FRONT-END MOBILE APPS

21. #3: one product split into many sub-domains

22. Organize by customer value

23. Study system dynamics at play
you may explore some of with these variables
Cycle
time
#
defects
Costs of
maintenance
#
people
Motivation
Code
quality
#
managers
Tech
debt

24. VARIABLES
Cycle
time
Quality
WIP

25. Cause-effect relationships
Quality
Cycle
time
WIPRework

26. reinforcing vs. balancing loops
B
A
D
C
B
A
D
C
Reinforcing
« UNSTABLE »
Balancing
« STABILIZING »

27. Delayed effects
Quality
Cycle
time
WIP
Rework
Motivation

28. Quick fixes
Quality
Cycle
time
WIPRework
Motivation
Salary

29. VARIABLES to explore
Product
quality
Product
time-to-market
Employee
happiness
Customer
satisfaction
Need for new
rules and policies
Need for
managers

30. Thank you!
Questions? Complains? Tomatoes?
agiletrainings.eu/blog
krivitsky.com/блог