More than XP. More than one day.

If you want to see software teams and organisations differently, from a people/culture/behaviour perspective, come to this session! You can reinvent the wheel, but you don't have to - therefore we based this on session on Gerald Weinberg's cultural patterns.

There are many models and frameworks that focus on 'processes', they're about maturity, about what one ought to be doing in order to be effective. In this session, we'll present a fresh perspective on software organisations, a people oriented instead of process oriented view. The model focuses on subculture and people's behaviour.

We believe that you need to work on both people and process to become successful and stay that way - they are not opposites (see also http://blog.piecemealgrowth.net/peoplevsprocessafalsedichotomyhtml ), and offer this session as an extension of your toolchest.

We'll introduce the six cultural patterns of software organisations, as described by Gerald M. Weinberg in his Quality Software Management series. We'll tell how you can recognise them, what behaviour you can expect, and how they handle uncertainty, unexpected events and change. We will also tell about which contexts these cultures are well suited for and when they go awry.

Other topics we'll cover are

• Effective interventions for different patterns
• Relation to Capability Maturity Model and other 'maturity' models

For more information about the cultural patterns and lots of other information about software processes, see Gerald M. Weinberg's four volume Quality Software Management series (ISBNs: 0-932633-22-6, 0-932633-24-2, 0-932633-28-5, and 0-932633-32-3)

Timetable

25 min Introduction; Oblivious, Variable, Routine, Steering, Anticipating, Congruent patterns
10 min Exercise - your stories
5 min Exercise summary & feedback

5 min Relating the cultural patterns to other models and frameworks
20 min Effective and ineffective interventions
10 min Exercise - interventions in practice
5 min Discussion about interventions

5 min Q&A, summary & feedback

Benefits of participating

The model gives a fresh view on organisations and teams. Participants can become more aware of what's happening in a group, team or organisation, and thus choose actions that fit the context.

Cultural patterns are a valuable tool for organisational change. For instance to determine if you are going to meet resistance, in what form, and where to find allies.