Today I found this thought-provoking blog post by Jeff Patton of Agile Product Design: “Agile development is more culture than process: Why thinking of agile as culture and not just process explains resistance and difficulty in teaching and learning the approach“. To me it makes sense; it fits with the “values, principles, practices” framework we’ve used for:
- thinking about and comparing software development methodologies (e.g. TSP and agile), in theory
- examining the impact of culture and value mismatches when tailoring development methods with an organization, in practice
I don’t think the applicability of the insight is limited to agile, though. Rather, I think it’s true that adopting any significant software development process change (like piloting TSP, or changing how the organization handles sustaining engineering) affects, and is affected by, culture and values. (Of course, I happen to believe that TSP is pretty compatible with agile values.)
What do you think? When you have learned (or taught) agile, did you learn/teach culture, process, both?
If you have introduced agile into a team or organization, did you observe cultural mismatches which impacted acceptance of the process transition?