Over last 10 years, agile methodology has been proven to be a powerful mindset for project managing especially in the software industry due to its rapid changing pace. Most of the Western country adopted agile, majority software company also treat agile knowledge as compulsory when hiring. Thousands of successful cases demonstrate huge improvement in terms of product quality, software delivering speed. Jobs like scrum master become highly demanded.
However, things got a little different in the Eastern world. At about 5–7 years ago, Asia companies heard about those successful story from the Western world, and try to adopt agile methodology. Many years later until today, most of them cannot transform their company as success as compare to the Western country. With the same powerful tools, it doesn’t necessarily works well on the other hand. But what is wrong in the Eastern? What cause agile adoption failed?
Face (面子) / Respect (尊重) / Power (權力)
The Chinese concept of [Face] (aka 面子 or miànzi) refers to a cultural understanding of respect, honor and social standing. Actions or words that are disrespectful will cause somebody to [Losing Face].
For example:
One day the boss invites your team for dinner on Saturday which is not a working day and suppose to be your family day. But everyone will obey and go (Even if you don’t want to go/you are not free to go).
Face can be gain/loss depends on your behave within a society, the Chinese culture put society over individual’s own interest. Because “boss” has more “power” than yourself, you will need to show “respect” him in order to be respect in future. This can be interpret as “giving face”, and the process is so call face engineering (面子工程) to ensure you maintain a certain level of “face” within the society. Because “face” is strongly bound with “social standing”. The higher you stand the more you will be respect.
Unlike the Western culture, Asian society is all about hierarchy. Everything has its pre-defined position in a society. Me as one of the asian born children, we are always told to be doctor or lawyer so that the whole family will have “face” regardless of my own interest. Also parents like to compare between children, showing off the achievement of their children for getting “face”.
For example:
Grand parent > Parent > Me > Son/Daughter
CEO > Lawyer > Programmer > Taxi driver
Senior Project Manager > Project Manager > Senior Developer > Developer
Now go back to agile. Referring to agile manifesto, Agile emphasize on individuals which allow each person to contribute unique value into software development cycle. Agile also promote safety environment that allow individual to express themselves freely. However this is completely contradict to asian concept of “face”, employee avoid expressing idea to prevent conflict, creative idea will be treated as trouble maker since it introduce conflict with previous idea/decision, if the new idea somehow prove the previous decision made by a senior is a mistake, then you will make him to loss face. Team members are divided because of job title (Asian treat Senior, Assistance and Junior differently), Junior engineer should respect decision of senior engineer, they have an assumption that experienced people are usually correct thus hiding their own question even though sometime they confused. Those hierarchical issue impede the free flow of idea, discourage bottom up suggestion, asian are too comfortable to be told what to do and senior people want to tell the other what to do because this is how the system work. That is what they call “harmony”(和諧) to maintain “face”.
The nail that sticks out shall be hammered down
The nail that sticks out shall be hammered down (“出る釘は打たれる”) is a Japanese proverb. People usually use this to point out about japan. Being difference is difficult and would met resistance.
Japanese has it unique way to learn foreign language. Kana(仮名) is a set of syllabaries to represent words from foreign country. Due to the limitation of syllabaries, it often introduce strong accent that makes Japanese English very hard to understand.
For example:
Cheese Cake — チーズケーキ (Chi zu ke ki)
Classmate — クラスメート (Ku ra su me to)
All Japanese school are teaching English with the Kana(仮名) system, imagine you are an exchange student whom first language is English, joining an English class in Japan local primary school. You speak perfect native English. Unfortunately, you will got bully in the class, you will make no friends and the teacher will force you to follow their Kana pronunciation. The reason behind is simple, Japanese society emphasis homogeneous which maintain “harmony”. Because if you are standing out from the other, you are embarrassing the rest of the society (If you speak native English in the class, you are embarrassing the rest of your classmate for their “poor” english). There are many news about bullying leads to student suicide in Japan.
At the working place, you often found nobody raise their hand when the host asking for question. But once they walk out from the meeting room, they started to discuss about the meeting, share idea privately. The mindset of homogeneous has already planted deeply in every Japanese, people tends to discuss problem privately to avoid embarrassing the other. As a result, you often encounter dead-air in the sprint retrospective, team member prefer private working space over open working area. Everybody are trying to behave the same which discourage creativity, and people tends to follow tradition which also prevent the adaptation of agile.
Responsibility Wall
Asian culture, particularly Chinese culture, is infamous for its zero tolerance for mistakes. Mistake makes Asian feel embarrassing and losing face. Eastern parents punish their child when they make mistake; teacher deduct masks for creative answer which is different from the model answer; team leader set a monthly goal but the team failed to meet the target thus this is a responsibility of the team members. When the teacher teach you something once, Asian assume you already master it and then you are no longer allow to make mistake. In fact making mistake is no big deal, we all learn from mistake and its necessary for one’s growth. While Asian has small room for making mistake.
Chinese people seldom admin their mistake. Taking responsibility and coming clean on a dispute puts that person in a position of “losing face”. Often when comes to a problem, you often hear excuses like: "It is not my part of duty”(這個不是我負責), “It’s could be help”(沒辦法) or “This was because this and that, so it is possible to have this problem”(因為這個/那個，所以問題是有可能出現的). This is all because he don’t want to loss his face. Chinese people likes to build the great wall of responsibility, clearly define the duty of each team member as detail as they can. So that when problem arise the wall can protect themselves and point out who is responsible. This is how they define teamwork. Chinese’s team is basically a dividing of task(分工合作) instead of mutual corporation (互相合作).
Agile with empty soul
Unlike traditional waterfall method, people follow order and try hard to meet those milestones. Agile promote completely different mindset which encourage change. In my experience most of the Asia company apply agile just like applying other traditional project management method. It ends up getting none of the benefit of Agile but introduce much more managing overhand than before. When encounter software integration issues, Agile become an excuse for poor software implementation by saying that we want to deliver value fast. When working with customer, Agile become an excuse for the client to make change unreasonably (The client says: Isn’t it agile is all about change?). When failed to meet the sprint goal, Agile become an excuse for potential problem of delivering value by saying that the estimate was not accuracy. Team member will comes up with thousand abstract explanation to defence instead of facing to what is causing the problem. For team member, sprint goal is just another extra deadline.
Asia companies leader often take everything into cost cutting. Agile for them is like a motorcycle parts which will take effect immediately after installation, many Asian still think Agile is just another methodology that can be apply without hardworking. Because of this “cost saving” mindset, Asia companies usually send only a few elite manger/leader for Agile training, hoping them to change the entire company and of course those selected person will be too busy getting back to their own business afterward, usually will not be available to ensure the Agile knowledge get inherited. As a result most of the team member has only basic idea about Agile. In fact building an Agile organisation is very expensive and require everybody to participate in order to success.
Also asian leader often treat team member a part of producing machine instead of individual, just like the Asia society treat people as gear wheel. People are the gear to drive a big system, adding more gear so that your engine gives more power. And you can also replace the gear with a cheaper one to reduce cost because man power is so cheap. Famous entrepreneur Jack Ma endorses 12 hours a day, 6 days a week work culture, so to maximize company profile with blood and sweat, just like building a modern pyramid with million of workers. Under such an environment, there is no reason for company to train individuals but instead to hire three more workers.
Will agile eventually works in Asia?
Agile is still a majority trend of Asian companies, people don’t really apply agile for the value behind, but just to stay cool among the industry. Presenting to the rest of the world Asian company are running with agile also. However almost none of them are actually going full throttle with Agile mindset, instead they just wearing the skin of Agile with empty soul.
I personally think adaptation of agile is a revolution of people mindset, Agile is way more than just follow workflows. One-size-fit-all is a fairy tale story which never come true. Everyone in the company should take part into the revolution in order to make it works. The fundamental cultural barriers need to be removed, Asian leaders whom deeply understand Agile mindset takes very important position to promote the concept.
My sincerely apologize
Please accept my apologize if anybody found this article offensive. I don’t mean to offence anybody but just to bring out a topic to discuss. In fact, you may find you personal experience is different and you are welcome to share. I would like to hear more from anywhere else from the world.
Thanks for reading…
