Beyond Agile: Cultural Patterns video on InfoQ

In our quest to put into words and pictures how important context is to choose practices, to show that there is no one-size-fits all solution for process and change strategy, Marc Evers and me went on tour last year with a presentation on Cultural Patterns. Take a look over at InfoQ – Beyond Agile: Cultural Patterns.

Willem and Marc introduce cultural patterns that can be found in software organizations. By understanding the cultural patterns then you can better adapt your practices.

The presentation starts off a bit slow, but picks up after the introduction. At the time we were incorporating some feedback about our presentations, most notably that we said too little about ourselves, so that the audience had difficulty understanding where we are coming from, and why we had to say something about the subject.

The videographer and editor did a good job at choosing the shots – shooting a pair presentation with one camera is challenging, especially since Marc and I are on opposite sides of the projected slide. The last part of the presentation was helped a lot by questions from the back of the room, I remember Keith Braithwaite and David Anderson (you can hear them faintly in the background) and there were one or two others. Next time I guess we could repeat more of the questions so they are more audible on the video.

A surprising thing we ran into was that Agile was not as mainstream as we thought – a surprising small number of participants put up their hands when we asked whether they were using (at least some) practices connected to Agile Software Development. Luckily, the patterns are independent of this, so we hope those who were/are doing something else get value from seeing various ways to organize development. It’s all about choosing an approach that fits and makes you more effective.

In hindsight the presentation became more graphical and less textual with each iteration. We’ve left the presentation alone for some time, and now have new ideas on presenting the material, as well as some new ideas on how to place various approaches to organize development. We’d love to hear from you about opportunities to perform new iterations…