Why you should consider culture in agile practices
Cultural differences may hinder agile teams due to its American origin. Agile started in the USA, including their norms and values, which doesn't fit in all cultures. That's why recognising unique cultural characteristics is critical for agile project success.
MIT Sloan research on agile project teams in China, India, and South-Korea found three areas where cultural scripts created challenging situations: maintaining flexibility and speed, building an effective agile team, and creating accessible communication channels
Indian cultural norm is to solve problems through improvisation with limited resources. Although this aligns with agile's flexibility, it is essential to streamline improvisation by setting up formal engagements to minimise inconsistencies. As for maintaining speed, it is necessary to have a contract stating all requirements and an acceptable timeframe to keep expectations realistically and eliminate the pressure of increasing speed.
In cultures like China and India, employees expect supervisors to make decisions and instruct them, which counters the self-organising element of an agile team. A best practice of building agile teams is the distribution of authority across multiple individuals by creating subteams where each team makes its decisions and communicate it with other groups.
Lastly, open communication is a critical element to agile practices. Cultural norms can have a restrictive effect on interpersonal communication. For that reason, promoting an open communication environment is necessary.
FURTHER READING
Consider Culture When Implementing Agile Practices
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