Cultural Standards

What makes a cultural standard a standard? Mostly, when I read the C3 descriptions, I am in awe at how they constructed a culture and cultural standards, complete with rituals, totems, signs, norms, etc. Is this a size thing or does anyone else have experiences with constructed cultures? I was recently told to stop being so laissez-faire and create a departmental standard, you know with reviews and checkpoints and use cases and things. The first thing that came to mind was, what makes an edict an edict?, what gets a declared standard followed? Lots of things I know how to do, but not how to create a cultural standard. --AlistairCockburn

Let me interrupt myself to suggest that cultural change almost always requires a CharismaticLeader?. --RonJeffries

That's about where I get to. I'll accept it if its the only answer. Such people are hard to put into the schedule - they are hard to find at any time (Kent counts). -- AlistairCockburn

I was there on C3 and offer these thoughts:

The project was known by the staff to have failed. KentBeck came in and made the official pronouncement.

The only staff who remained were self-selected, people who thought it could be done, but who knew they didn't know how.

Kent offered a framework for doing their work, that relied on

Simplicity. The previous attempt was too complex and the developers knew it.
Communication. The previous team was stratified into haves and have-nots, and hid information from its own members and management.
Testing. There were no tests on the previous system, no one could tell how well it was working.
Aggressiveness. The team wanted to succeed and were willing to go after a solution with energy. They were brave individuals, who had chosen to try to fix a bad situation.

And Kent made it clear from the beginning that we would look at what we did, measure how it worked, and improve our process continually. He was confident, and he gave the team confidence. --RonJeffries

There are other projects at Chrysler that could benefit from what C3 does. And sometimes I even perceive resistance to the ideas we offer here. In the absence of a project hitting the wall, what can bring about a CulturalChange?

Perhaps less resistance than you realise. -- DaveHarris

It sounds to me as though C3 had another thing going for it:

Management buy-in By bringing in KentBeck and giving him the authority to make changes, management indicated that what he said had management backing. Without this, many developers are reluctant to make changes in their own work habits, lest they become less productive in the short term and incur management wrath. With it, they often believe that management will tolerate short-term inefficiencies. -- RussellGold

We certainly did have management buy-in at the CIO level, and it helped when middle managers couldn't figure out what we were talking about. The team did need the feeling that they were not under the ax. However, we did not feel much resistance to the changes: it was clear they would make the team more productive, since they knew how awful it had been the old way. They were ready for change and ripe for Kent's ideas. What resistance there was came from inner reluctance to change (CowboyEthic?), not from fear of management. --RonJeffries