Proposed Survey

I have finally come up with the survey questions. These have been modeled not only on agile and organizational culture factors. A third dimension has been added related to social culture. This will usually reflect country specific details. However, some questions will be related to cultural aspects outside of work.

I feel that this research will generate results which will help in finding a middle path to successful software development in projects distributed across companies, countries and cultures. The survey questions will be posted soon.

Organizational Culture and its effect on Employee Retention

Fifth paper reviewed: A study of Organizational Culture and its effect on Employee Retention
Author: Nandita Chatterjee R V Institute of Management, Bangalore
Year Published: 2009
Date Reviewed: October 27^th, 2011
Link: http://www.mendeley.com/research/study-organisational-culture-effect-employee-retention/
Review:
For a change, this time I reviewed a paper disconnected with Agile methodologies or Software Engineering. This particular paper was published in the ASBM Journal of Management.
The paper deals with employee retention and its relation to organizational culture. From this paper, we see the author quoting four components of organizational culture. The four components are:

·         People – The abilities, needs, values and expectations of the individuals.

·         Process – Behaviors, attitudes and interactions that occur within the organization at the individual, team and inter-team levels.

·         Structures – The formal mechanisms of the organization that are designed to channel behavior toward organizational goals and fulfill the needs of the members.

·         Environment – The external conditions which the organization deals with. This includes customers, technology and social values within which it operates.

Therefore, in order to find a clear correlation between Agile methodologies and Organizational culture, we must map the principles behind Agile and the components of culture. I propose the following map:

A. General Questions about Agile
1	Customer Satisfaction
7	Working Software
10	Simplicity
B. People
2	Welcome changing requirements
5	Build projects around motivated individuals
9	Attention to technical excellence
C. Process
1	Early and Continuous Development
4	Business people and developers must work together throughout
5	Trust them to get the job done
6	Face-to-face communication
9	Good Design
11	Self organizing teams
12	Team behavior tuned regularly
D. Structures
3	Deliver working software frequently
3	Shorter time scale
8	Sustainable development
E. Environment
2	Harness change for customer’s advantage
5	Give them the environment and support they need
8	Sponsors, developers and users should maintain constant pace

For further information on the principles behind the Agile Manifesto, please visit: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html