When an organization takes on technical debt unknowingly we call it Dark Debt. While we’ve gotten good at identifying and managing technical debt, Dark Debt of the cultural variety is harder to see. Is your IT organization’s culture impacted by: Invisible and unplanned work Late work or low quality work Unclear priorities and wasted effort If so, you’re likely dealing with unintended consequences of decisions that caused misalignment and a lack of visibility - two common causes of Dark Debt. Join us to learn how to recognize and avoid the causes of Dark Debt so you can start repairing the culture of your organization.

1. Intro slide

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Meet Our Speakers
Dominica DeGrandis
@dominicad
John Rauser
@jrause

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Goal:
To help people
recognize the
symptoms of
cultural debt
and learn ways
to manage it.

4. © Tasktop 2017 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/debt.html
Debt:
A duty or obligation to
pay money, deliver
goods, or render
service under an
express or implied
agreement.

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dark debt :
debt that’s hard to see?

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Technical Debt
“Taking a short cut or the easy
path to achieve a short term
goal or objective”

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Cultural Debt
“Borrowing against
the culture of your
organization”

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Why does cultural debt matter?
▪ Cascading effects
▪ Impacts the whole system
▪ Misalignment across the org

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Poll time!
To what extent do you discuss and
manage debt in your organization?

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Organizational Culture - attributes & ingredients
1. Leadership philosophy & values
2. Communication
3. Visibility of information flow
4. Job satisfaction
5. Learning climate

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Purpose - why do we exist?
Conduct - how do we behave?
Strategy - what do we do?
Value - how will we succeed?
Responsibilities - who does what?
Priorities - what is the most important?
What happens if we ignore cultural debt regarding leadership?
1. Leadership philosophy & values

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What happens if we ignore cultural debt regarding communication?
2. Communication

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What happens if we ignore cultural debt regarding visibility?
3. Visibility

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What happens if we ignore cultural debt regarding Job satisfaction?
4. Job Satisfaction

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What happens if we ignore cultural debt regarding learning?
5.Learning Climate

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Poll time!
Which of the following ingredients of
culture influence your decisions?

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Cultural Debt Catalysts
1. Conflicting priorities
2. Big changes
3. Lack of feedback
4. Multi-speed teams
5. Running with sharp metrics

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1. Conflicting Priorities

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2. Big Change

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Why Change is Inevitable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbPi68GQX10
Physicist Professor Brian Cox - The Wonders of the Universe
“Everything is irreversibly changing.”
It’s not just permanent change, it’s decay.
2nd Law of Thermodynamics, everything
goes from low to high entropy, from order
to disorder.”

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3. Feedback

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4. Multi-speed Teams

23. 5. Running with Sharp Metrics
http://www.everydaykanban.com/2017/04/28/devops-days-seattle-2017/#more-1091

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Poll time!
Which of these cultural debt catalysts
are affecting your organization?

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Cultural Debt Management
1. Know the symptoms
2. Create psychological safety
3. Visualize the flow of work

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Summary of Cultural debt symptoms
• Conflicting priorities. Unplanned work, blame, late work, poor quality
• Surprises and unintended expectations
• Resistance to metrics assumptions
• Conflicting messages
• Unhappy people
• Change aversion comments:
“But, we’ve always done it this way.”
“I don’t understand why we need to change the way we do _____.”
“That won’t work here.”

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1765804/pdf/v013p0ii22.pdf
Typology of Organizational Culture – Westrum model
https://continuousdelivery.com/implementing/culture/

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Poll time!
Which typology does your
organization fall into?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avauW5FAWCw&list=PLE7tQUdRKcyYPrQMmeYDti-yOmt4IJnpI&index=1

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Enter DevOps Culture
• information flows
• learning climate is investment
• high cooperation & trust
• people like their job
DevOps practices influenced by the lean and safety communities:
blameless postmortems, continuous improvement, systems thinking, value stream
mapping, respect for people, value creation.

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Google two year study results:
Who is on a team matters less than
how team members interact.
The willingness to talk about errors is
by far the most important factor for a team
Amy Edmonson TED talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoLuui9gX8
What makes a great team?

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Visualize the whole system

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Make Dependencies Visible

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Program level to team visibility

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Any Questions?
John Rauser
@jrause
Dominica DeGrandis
@dominicad

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Dominica’s Book Signing Monday, November 13 from 5:30-7:30pm
Add to calendar or enter to win:
• http://go.tasktop.com/Making-Work-Visible-Book-Signing.html
Visit us at Booth #2
Recommended Sessions:
http://go.tasktop.com/DOES2017.html