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The Agile culture is a set of characteristics found in all the Agile methodologies. These characteristics are empowerment, adaptation, and a focus on performance.
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Quick reference
Agile Culture
The Agile culture is a set of characteristics found in all the Agile methodologies. These characteristics are empowerment, adaptation, and a focus on performance.
When to Use Agile Culture
The elements of Agile culture are fundamental to successful Agile projects. These elements are often beneficial to any project management methodology. They are the organizational building blocks for Agile methodologies. If the organization will not embrace these characteristics, at least within Agile projects, the methodology will fail.
Instructions
There are three essential elements of organizational culture that characterize all Agile methodologies. Without these characteristics, an Agile methodology will fail.
- A culture of empowerment. Agile projects rely on empowered teams to plan and execute the project. The teams are in charge, not a body of senior managers or project management experts who plan the project and then direct others to execute the project. The team members have the authority to decide how best to achieve the project objectives. This includes access to resources and training on how to both use the resources and how to manage their work. The teams are not caught in organizational “turf wars” where they have to beg for permission to do their job. Also, the team works in a collaborative manner. Every team member is engaged and has input into the plan and execution of the project. Team members are not isolated from each other.
- A culture of adaptation. Agile projects expect and embrace change. That doesn’t mean they are out of control, they just plan that new and better information will become available as the project unfolds and they intend to incorporate that new and better information. This is one of the primary reasons that almost all Agile methodologies practice a form of iterative development. Each iteration builds on the previous iteration. Some of the changing information used by the project is from outside the team. Customer needs or market conditions change and the measures of project success are updated accordingly. Some of the changing information comes from inside the project activities. Lessons learned and technical insights gained in one iteration of the project are used to better plan and execute the next iteration. In addition, a risk analysis is performed as part of each iteration, and risk responses to both opportunities and threats are actively managed.
- A culture of performance. A very important characteristic, and the one that is most threatening to the project team members, is a culture of performance. The primary measure is not whether the project finished on time or on budget, it is whether the project results achieved the desired business impact. There is no trophy for participation; there is only a trophy for winning. The team is measured on overall project performance and the entire team is held accountable. If one team member fails and causes the project to fail, that failure is placed on the entire team. By the same token, if the project succeeds, the success is shared by the entire team, not just the project leader. Some people find this environment invigorating, others are intimidated. An individual cannot hide because the performance of project activities is visually tracked and those who are not performing are exposed, while those who are over-performing are acknowledged.
Hints and Tips
- If these elements of organizational culture are not typically embraced by your organization, you will need to practice organizational change management as part of an Agile implementation. However, if these are characteristics of your organization, it will quickly embrace Agile as a compatible project management best practice.
- 00:00 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen.
- 00:05 We discussed Agile project management from a planning aspect.
- 00:09 But there are some significant cultural aspects that affect how
- 00:13 the project is executed.
- 00:15 These are related to how that self-organized team embraces team
- 00:19 leadership.
- 00:21 Before we get into the elements of Agile culture, let me talk for
- 00:24 a minute about the format of this slide.
- 00:26 You can see at the bottom of this chart is Task 7 from Domain I of
- 00:30 the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner Exam Content Outline handbook.
- 00:34 If you're taking the course to prepare for an exam,
- 00:37 this slide will help you understand the meaning of this task.
- 00:41 Okay, enough about the slide, let's get back to the Agile culture.
- 00:45 Agile is based upon empowerment.
- 00:48 The teams don't need to keep running back to managers and asking mother may I,
- 00:52 they have the authority to do the project work.
- 00:55 They won't be constantly second guessed and every action and decision challenged.
- 01:00 That also means that they have access to the training that they need to be able to
- 01:04 do the work well.
- 01:06 Another element of empowerment is that when an Agile team runs into
- 01:10 an organizational roadblock, it is quickly removed.
- 01:14 That does not mean that they can do anything they want, but
- 01:17 they are not slowed by turf wars within the organization.
- 01:21 When they need resources they get them.
- 01:24 Also, everyone on the team participates in a collaborative manner.
- 01:28 There are no isolated islands of activity.
- 01:30 Part of empowerment is that the entire team is involved throughout the project.
- 01:37 Another characteristic of Agile projects is adaptation.
- 01:41 The project quickly responds to changes in the market or business environment.
- 01:45 They aren't stuck with an out of date specification for user needs.
- 01:50 If the market changes the customer expectation,
- 01:52 they can quickly change the characteristics during the next sprint so
- 01:56 that what they are developing meets the new expectation.
- 02:00 They can also react quickly to the lessons learned within the project.
- 02:05 They're not tied to a project plan that was created months or
- 02:08 maybe even years before.
- 02:09 They can use the project results from the past few weeks or months and
- 02:13 revise the activities and estimates of the work that is before them.
- 02:17 There is flexibility built into the planning and management of the project.
- 02:21 A key element of that is the iterative and evolutionary nature of the project.
- 02:26 It is expected that the project results will be created in a series of waves and
- 02:30 each wave will build upon the preceding wave.
- 02:33 This allows the reaction to external conditions,
- 02:36 the applications of lessons learned from previous waves.
- 02:39 And also, the ability to respond to risks, both opportunities and threats.
- 02:44 Each wave includes an element of risk analysis and risk response.
- 02:50 A third aspect of the culture of Agile projects is the focus on the performance
- 02:54 of the deliverables.
- 02:56 Project success or failure is measured by the performance of the project
- 03:00 deliverables once they're in the hands of the customer,
- 03:03 not by completing the project on time and on budget.
- 03:06 It is business impact that matters.
- 03:09 So if the project is developing a new product,
- 03:11 did the business get the sales growth expected?
- 03:14 If the product is upgrading a business system,
- 03:16 did the improvement in productivity materialize?
- 03:19 Another element of performance is personal performance.
- 03:23 All of the project team is held accountable for the success or
- 03:26 failure of the project, not just the project leader.
- 03:29 So a team member can't sit back and say, well, I did my part,
- 03:32 that's another team member's job and they're the ones who dropped the ball.
- 03:37 The entire team is in it together, they win as a team, they lose as a team.
- 03:41 This helps to tighten the teamwork and
- 03:43 increases the level of collaboration on the project.
- 03:47 A further aspect of the focus on performance is that the project
- 03:51 performance is visibly tracked.
- 03:53 So that everyone on the team, and sometimes even those not on the team,
- 03:57 can see how the project is performing.
- 03:59 Project activities are stories and tasks that a team member selects.
- 04:04 The status of that story is obvious to everyone on the scrum board.
- 04:08 That means a team member can't hide.
- 04:11 This is the type of publicly keeping score on a project that can be
- 04:15 intimidating to some people, but is energizing to others.
- 04:19 A team member can't retire in place and just coast.
- 04:23 If they do, their lack of performance quickly becomes evident to all and
- 04:27 embarrassment will likely follow.
- 04:30 By the same token, those who aggressively work on their tasks and
- 04:34 exceed expectations will quickly stand out and be recognized.
- 04:38 The Agile culture is one of the key elements of success on Agile projects.
- 04:42 And frankly, any project would do well to adopt this culture.
- 04:46 The Agile methodologies strive to build this culture into the day-to-day
- 04:51 practices.
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