Local Culture and Global Agility
Culture existed before Agile. Culture also existed before what is now known as "organizational" or "corporate culture". Outside of the world of global enterprises and systems, culture within a society helps define what it means to be human. Within a societal culture, individuals and interactions really are valued over processes and tools.
Alas, much of the conversation about "culture" for agile teams focuses on how to design or change organizational culture to make it support agile practices. From this perspective, if you have the wrong culture, agile won't thrive. To have the "right" culture, many organizations adopt scaling or adoption frameworks that create rules around communication and collaboration that ignore how people live and communicate with each other naturally.
What if traditions of a local culture are forces that actually help support communication within a global program that uses agile? What if people bringing traditions from their own culture can create something global and distributed that's more valuable than if they worked on their own?
This talk will explore how the simple principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto create a space where people local living in local cultures can contribute greatly to global agility.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
This talk will explore how the simple principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto create a space where people local living in local cultures can contribute greatly to global agility. The talk is organized in five sections:
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How traditional cultures create different conditions for global agile teams, beyond older notions of "offshoring" or "outsourcing"
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Examples of how traditions of a local culture can contribute to agility (Southern India, Central Anatolia, Southern Michigan in the USA)
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Fundamental practices that create the space for people to thrive on distributed teams within their own societies.
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Potential impediments to global agility, and how to avoid them.
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Building on the the principles of the Agile Manifesto to launch powerful global agile teams today.
Learning Outcome
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How local societal culture contributes to global agility within the context of the Agile Manifesto.
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Distinguish global agile teams and programs from older approaches to distributed work.
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Focused practices that allow people to be great global agile team members within the context of their local society.
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Potential impediments to global agility, and how to avoid them.
Target Audience
Team Members, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Managers, Executives, Agile Coaches
Links
Past Presentations:
- "Exploiting Core Agile Practices at the Program Level", presented at:
- Mile High Agile - April 2014
- Global Scrum Gathering New Orleans - May 2014
- Agile SoCal - August 2014
- Agile India 2015 - March 2015
- Agile Austin - May 2015
- Global Scrum Gathering Shanghai - September 2015
- Global Scrum Gathering Prague - November 2015
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"The Exorcist Was a Lean Planning Master", presented at:
- Agile and Beyond (Detroit) 2014
- Agile India 2015
- Global Scrum Gathering Shanghai 2015
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"Missionizing Your Agile Team" - Global Scrum Gathering, Seattle 2011
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"Fast Conversations" - Global Scrum Gathering, Las Vegas 2013
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"Vince Lombardi, Agile Coach" - Bank of America Agile Speakers Series, 2013
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"Agile Usability" - SDWest, 2009
schedule Submitted 7 years ago
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Hugo Messer - How to manage distributed teams successfully
90 Mins
Workshop
Intermediate
In Hugo’s workshop, participants will create a best practice board in teams of 5-6 people. The teams go through each block of ‘The Bridge Canvas’. The goal is to share best practices, ideas and experiences. Per block, each team selects the ‘best best practice’. At the end of the workshop, each team will present the best best practices for each block.
At the start of the workshop, Hugo shares a few best practices (personal ones + from other distributed agile experts). Each person gets a handout with clear instructions. This includes some questions to stimulate thinking within the team + some best practice examples per block.