I delivered this talk at Wipro's internal session for Delivery Leads. Share your views :)

1. Sociology of
Agile
Transformation
Tathagat Varma
http://thoughtleadership.in

2. What is Sociology?
• Study of social life, social
change, and the social
causes and consequences of
human behavior.
• Sociologists investigate the
structure of groups,
organizations, and societies,
and how people interact
within these contexts.
• All human behavior is social.
https://www.soc.cornell.edu/undergrad/what-is-sociology/

3. Why study Sociology?
• Software development is a human
endeavor involving three key pillars:
• Cognitive: come up with ideas to solve
problems creatively
• Emotional: passion drives meaningful
engagement
• Social: it takes a village to raise a child!
• Merely asking a team to become “agile”
without considering these pillars is
wishful thinking, dangerous and
outrightly stupid!

4. Understanding Social World
• Groups, organizations, conventions,
social roles, conflicts and
cooperation are no less real than
physical particles and mental
attitudes.
• Social ontology examines what kind
of objects, relations, properties and
events they are, and how they
relate to mind and matter.
http://social.univie.ac.at/

5. Agency
• The ability of individuals and groups
to exercise free will and make social
change
• Example:
• A programmer knows Java
• …Can also write test scripts
• …And knows about UX
• …And is great with people
• …Is an excellent swimmer
• …And an awesome singer!
• …But, may/not get to do all that :(

8. Structure
• Patterned social arrangements designed to
bring an order and have an effect on agency.
• However, there is no structure without
agency.
• Agents give up their agency (submission)
to allow organizations to create structure
and make decisions at their behalf, and
• Agree to cooperate with other agents
(coordination) to the organization’s
agenda.
• Examples: Family, Neighborhood,
Organization, Faith, etc.

10. Structure and Agency
Micro Macro
Agency Structure
Individual Choice
“Free Will”
Social Forces
Solidarity Social Control

11. Role of Structure
• By and large, structure has a much
bigger influence on an individual than
the individual’s own agency.
• Structure isn’t necessarily bad -
imagine if everyone starts driving
how it pleases them, etc.
• However, too much of structure might
stifle individual motivation, creativity
and performance, and finally impact
organizational performance.

12. Coleman’s Boat
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/13/ColemansBoat.png

15. Context
• The influence that shapes the
meaning of events, behavior,
words, and body language
• Examples:
• Someone pats you
• Couple kissing
• “I don’t like your idea”

16. Types of Structures
• Economic: producer / consumer, lord / serf,
professor / student, master / apprentice, senior
/ junior, etc.
• Cultural: Norms, Customers, Traditions,
Rituals, Ideologies, etc.
• Social: old / young, upper class / lower class,
etc.
• Racial: white / black, hispanic / asian, etc.
• Regional: insiders / outsiders,
• Gender: male / female
• Interest-based: Sports club, Celebrity Fan club,
Animal lovers, Nature lovers, …
• …

17. Why do we give up our agency?
• Coercion: there is no other option but
to obey the orders, e.g. dictatorship,
physical force, intimidation, penalties,
etc.
• Exchange: the advantages (or,
benefits) outweigh the disadvantages
(or, costs), e.g. modern organizations
• Normative: to achieve some collective
outcomes of higher value, e.g. social,
community, open-source, wikipedia,
etc.

18. Hierarchy
• Hierarchy establishes and preserves the rigid
top-down social order among agents who might
otherwise have individual agendas by
establishing a clear line of command
• Members are stripped of individuality and
forced to conform to common rules, e.g. jails,
cults, manufacturing shops, military,
government setup, etc.
• Individuality is derived from your place in the
social structure, e.g. rank, titles, seniority, etc.
• Creates micro-structures of one agent assuming
a dominant position over another, a micro
dynamic of power and authority

19. Modern Organizations
• They are like “utilitarian
organizations” - we offer to work
in return of fair wages
• However, when the “exchange” is
seen offering lower returns,
employees might leave
• Traditionally, relied on some form
of hierarchy (increasingly less
rigid) to establish social order

20. Normative Organizations
• Purpose: Shared belief over individual
benefits
• Participation: Voluntary over forced
• Coordination: Horizontal (networks) over
vertical (hierarchy)
• Alignment: alignment of individual’s
agenda with that of whole over submission
or coercion
• Decision-making: consensus over
compliance
• Governance: self-governance over
organizational controls

21. Real-world Organizations
• A combination of these three forms
• Examples:
• Military: people join to serve the nation
(normative), get paid for their work
(exchange) and agree to stringent discipline
(coercion)
• Organisation: employees believe in the
vision, mission and values (normative), get
paid salaries and benefits (exchange) and
agree to organizational policies and
procedures (HR, Admin, Budget, Roles and
responsibilities, etc.)

22. Traditional Project Team
• Composed of:
• Manager: power-holder, ensures
compliance with the structures,
provides direction, etc.
• Team: brings the agency,
surrenders to the structure, trusts
manager with the right judgment
• Worked “well” in production era due
to prevailing economic and social
structures.
• Today?

23. Traditional Project Team
• Coercion: standard processes
(assembly-line approach), designated
roles, assigned work, imposed
deadlines, etc., etc.
• Exchange: “lifetime” job, steady
paycheck, social prestige, promotions,
learning, career growth, etc.
• Normative: not much really. More of
company loyalty, corporate
citizenship, etc.

24. Today’s context?
• Describe how individuals and teams
would like to have the following:
• Coercion?
• Exchange?
• Normative?
• Does your current “process” deliver
that?
• How is your current
“transformation” approach to it?

25. Industrial to Knowledge Era
Industrial Era Knowledge Era
Structure
Agency
Agency
Structure

26. What’s a transformation?
• A permanent and self-sustaining
change in
• agency (i.e., personal change, e.g.
learn swimming, quit smoking, or
“lose” weight)
• structure (i.e., organizational change,
e.g. delayer the organization, or
radically change the business model)
• They are interdependent!
• Can’t change one without other
• Must leverage each other

28. What does agile transformation mean?
• Adopting methodologies or frameworks such as
Scrum, XP, Kanban, etc.?
• Adopting methods such as TDD, CI/CD, Refactoring,
etc.?
• Adopting tools such as JIRA, VersionOne, Rally, etc.?
• Adopting scaling frameworks such as SAFe, LeSS,
DAD, etc.?
• Training individuals?
• Agile certifications?
• Provide coaching?
• Open-plan offices?
• Whiteboards?
• Sticky notes?
• Daily standups?
• …???

29. Adoption vs. Transformation
• Agile adoption is changing the
agency of the team, e.g. provide
scrum training or bring in some
agile methods. Sure, it works!
• However, unless it is coupled
with commensurate change in
the structure of the organization,
it might only temporary and
never in equilibrium.

30. So, how to “transform”?
• Multiple levels of changes need to
be aligned:
• Individual
• Team Dynamics
• Organization Processes
• Leadership and Culture
• Individuals bring their own agency,
but need support, alignment and
reinforcement from leadership.

31. Individual Changes
• Growth Mindset
• T-shaped learner
• Initiative
• Grit
• Accountability

32. Team Changes
• Small
• Co-located
• Cross-functional
• Self-organizing
• Team of equals
• People first, process reasonably-
placed second and tools a
distant third (if at all!)

33. Organizational Changes
• Goal-setting: one for all, all for
one!
• Feedback from peers in the
trenches
• Team rewards (vs. Individual)
• Starfish organization

34. Leadership and Culture
• Respect and nurture agency
• Evolve a culture of
experimentation-led learning
• “Safe to fail” culture
• Get the right people and get out
of the way - gardner vs
ringmaster
• Maintain bottomline
accountability!

35. So, what is transformation?
• Status quo: Methods and structures
determine agency behavior
• Adoption: people “blindly” follow the
agile processes, methods or tools
• Efficiency: agents apply knowledge
based on the context to improve
productivity
• Effectiveness: agents improvise,
rebuild or create structure to align
with business goals

36. A “transformed” org?
• An urban myth! A real
transformation has no finish line.
• Transformation is not code
quality or velocity. It is business
results!
• Perennially sustain the new
“default” state without any
“scaffolds” and organically evolve
it.

37. Recap
• Software development is a social
activity.
• Traditional approach was to impose a
rigid structure.
• Agile approach is to nurture the agency
and let the structure evolve organically.
• Mere adoption of agile methodologies or
methods won’t create a “transformation”
• Leadership needs to own the change
agenda and facilitate agile
transformation.