Willem van den Ende and Marc Evers introduce different cultural patterns you can find in software organizations, based on Gerald M. Weinberg's work, and tell how to recognize them, what behavior to expect, and how you can handle unexpected events and change. They show how different agile processes like Scrum, XP, and Lean Software Development fit in, while explaining some common agile failure modes. The six cultures presented are:
- Routine: Managers want people to stick to the plan and process.
- Variable: Good relationships between customers and developers. Typically small teams. Performance and quality depends on the people involved moreso than other teams and is typically a hero culture.
- Steering: Choose among routines by the results they produce, i.e. an empirical process. Typical XP an Scrum teams are this culture. A caveat, this is only true if you make XP or Scrum 'your own'. XP 'by the book' reverts to a routine culture.
- Oblivious: No seperation between the user and developer. Highly adaptive and highly customer oriented.
- Anticipating: The art of the long view. Constantly improving the process. Lean Software Development falls in this area.
- Congruent: Transferrable cultural practices. Culture of ongoing reflection and improvement.
Watch this presentation to get an overview of typical cultures in software development organizations and their strengths and weaknesses.
