My brain is broken. In a good way.

[brickhousewench]

I went to an Agile New England meeting tonight. The topic was Agile Culture and Adoption Survival Guide. The Mushroom Farm is the fourth place I’ve worked that’s doing Agile software development, and so far it’s not looking good (For example, you can’t have a team with one guy on it…..). For a company that doesn’t communicate well, and never

Comments

[kass_rants]

This has really got me thinking. I hope you have leisure soon to explain it a little more.

[brickhousewench]

The big thing for me is I keep ending up at companies with command and control cultures, when I think I'd really be happier if I could find a company that is in any of the other three quadrants.

Ever since I landed at the Mushroom Farm I've been thinking about company culture, and how having a good fit is so important for whether or not I'm happy at work. And I've been trying to figure out how, in future interviews, I can get some insight into company culture. He mentioned a book, The Reengineering Alternative by William Schneider, that has a company culture questionaire in it. I'm going to have to pick up a copy.

I have a feeling I'll be writing about this for the next week or so....

[kass_rants]

I am inordinately fond of the Cultivation model. I would really like that to be the model for RH. I've spoken about this at length with Bob even before I knew it had a name. I said, "I want to grow people into who we need."

I also like a dash of Collaboration and Competence. Worked in too many Control places. It doesn't work. At least not happily.

But yeah: how to find out the culture before you "buy"? Tough. Unless they're very proud of it and brag about it in the interview, it's hard to know. I supposed you could ask, but if they aren't a company who things in these terms, the interviewer might just go, "Huh? I dunno."

[brickhousewench]

Not everyone spends time navel gazing like introverts do. I suspect most companies have no idea what their company culture looks like.

My first software company was, as one of my friends quipped, "A drinking company with a software problem." But really, I think they were somewhere on the border between competence and control.

Last night, when we did the exercise to determine your current company culture, my group decided that The Mushroom Farm has a caos culture. That's why I included the quote about how "all models are wrong." ;-)

[guy_todd]

Do you have a copy of the exercise to determine one's company model? I can't for the life of me guess what my company's is...:-0
"Stumble-ocracy" might do it...;-)

[brickhousewench]

The speaker mentioned a book during his talk, The Reengineering Alternative (http://www.amazon.com/Reengineering-Alternative-William-Schneider/dp/0071359818). He said there's a questionaire in the book, and when I peeked at the "Look Inside" link there is a whole chapter Core Culture Questionaire,so when I ordered a bunch books this weekend, I added it to the order.

I'll keep ya posted when I read it.