Cultural Differences

Agile, scrum, are all principle to get the teams proceed in a steady pace, with great visibility. We plan on what to do in a fixed period of time and re-prioritize things as needed.

But have been running like 6 sprints and yet, we don't see the steadiness expected. Team is working long hours, feeling stressful, cannot deliver quality deliverable.

Come to think of it, I have noticed the following.

1. We keep adding things to the originally planned task lists.

2. We take dead line as DEADLINE

3. Admitting mistake is shameful

Being a Chinese, we are not good at saying 'No' and especially when the request is coming from the boss. It is not a common thing in telling the boss that something cannot be done.

And we are reluctant to change, and enduring an ever changing requirement is something not in our culture. Personally, I disagree to reject things just because we don't want to take changes. Pushing back should only because what's working on is of higher importance.

Also, asking for help is like raising excuses, we don't see it proper to postpone when a mutual consent has been established.

Lastly, admitting mistake is shameful. Cover up, denial or finding excuses is more common. But then, this results in inaccurate judgement, especially on determining task completion.

There are also some simple thing which differs between Chinese and westerner. We take lunch quite seriously, we rarely skip lunch, or do a quick one. Eating an apple as lunch is not our style.

Getting scrum or agile to work for Chinese might need to tweak a few things but the most important thing of all, is to make people understand the principle and follow it religiously.