Is Agile a Process or a Culture?

March 5, 2009

InfoQ editor Amr Elssamadisy posted an interesting article recently, which wonders whether agile is a process or a culture (http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/02/agile-is-culture). For the most part, we tend to think of agile as a process, but, as blogger Jeff Patton points out, culture is the process.

When I think about it, agile can often seem more like a culture than a process. When organizations begin to transform to agile ways of working, it doesn’t just require that they shake up how they work. It also requires how they think about work. In other words, agile requires team members to reorient themselves philosophically. Really, agile can be a big enough change from traditional development methods that it can seem on the order of a very big life change. (Think switching religions or political parties, or moving to another country.) For example, it asks that managers trust their teams to self-organize and, conversely, that teams trust their managers not to micro-manage them. Most agile paradigms entail processes that reinforce these values, so, as Patton suggests, culture and process are inextricably entwined.

However, if we were to indulge a chicken vs. egg kind of debate, would you agree that culture has to change before processes can? Or do you think an organization can implement process changes without addressing the overall culture that informs them? This problem’s a little recursive, but I think there’s something to it. Feel free to weigh in with comments!

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Written by admin · Filed Under Agile Project Management 

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