What’s Culture to You?

A simple definition of culture is “what goes without saying,” in other words, what is familiar, recognizable, and expected. Everything we do is influenced by culture: how we react to situations, how we solve problems, and, more importantly for our context, how we interpret values from the agile manifesto, such as “individuals and interactions over processes and tools,” and “customer collaboration over contract negotiation.” Methodologies and practices are not too different worldwide; what makes the difference is the cultural influence in their interpretation.

Through a series of blog posts, we will outline the dimensions of culture and cultural orientations, we’ll interpret them, and we’ll understand how they map in a cultural distance. We will overview how each of these dimensions and orientations affects a multicultural team’s daily interactions and how cultural misunderstandings can affect our delivery of value in an agile team.

Also, we will go over the most important cultural tools that can positively influence relationships within remote teams and how to implement them. So, join me in this intercultural exploration. Who knows? Maybe together we will discover a thing or two.