> People are most likely to take an existing thing and tweak it into a new thing that does what they need, and in the process they will take the good and bad from that existing thing. So if you want them to follow a best practice, put it in their starting templates. > ... >All of this is to say that developers have more power than they imagine to change the engineering culture around them. As you build software that others will use or that your peers will work on, are you making it easy for them to do the right thing? If you build platforms, bake in easy integrations for the software values you want to see. If you’re in the position to choose new tools, pick ones that support the standards you want taken seriously. And as you write code, make it easy for others who will copy-paste what you’ve done to then do the right thing. > > Camille Fournier, from [Driving Cultural Change Through Software Choices](https://skamille.medium.com/driving-cultural-change-through-software-choices-bf69d2db6539) > Though some scientists, particularly the older and more experienced ones, may resist indefinitely, most of them can be reached in one way or another. Conversions will occur a few at a time until, after the last holdouts have died, the whole profession will again be practicing under a single, but now a different, paradigm. > — Thomas S. Kuhn, [The Structure of Scientific Revolution](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61539.The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions) ## Some thoughts from Jeff Patton > Right now your organization believes that everything revolves around you building software quickly and we are trying to get them understand that our success is a function of how many problems we solve and for who. > —Jeff Patton, from [Changing the game](https://youtu.be/OY4aAwbtV8s?t=2280) > Until then, you are Sisyphus and your job is to push this change up the hill every single day. > —Jeff Patton, from [Changing the game](https://youtu.be/OY4aAwbtV8s?t=2280) - culture change might be brought up by - showing the business where it hurts - leading - teaching and coaching - reframing requests as problems to solve and outcomes to achieve - back up from the request and reframe into - 1. the problem we are solving for this customer - 2. the assumption what the customers will do/say/feel - 3. the business impact that we will achieve - people that get it (that are converted), but leave ![[Screenshot 2022-04-28T18.54.png]] ![[Screenshot 2022-04-28T18.56.png]] ## Some thoughts - Circle of influence: given a (work) environment, it appears that one has three options: - to accept the environment - to try to change the environment - to leave the environment - When sharing ideas, it might help to try to minimize traction, that is, the cost for the other. For example, instead of sending a link to the book, send the PDF and the chapter, or send screenshot directly. - It might be worth paying attention to attitudes of colleagues that one is surrounded with. Some might have different incentives or view the work differently. As a consequence, they might be inaccurate proxies to the rest of the organization. It might be worth exploring the organization behind such proxies directly, although that also seems to be quite a delicate topic. ## Further reading - [Jeff Patton - Changing the game - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY4aAwbtV8s) - [Sasquatch music festival 2009 - Guy starts dance party - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8z7f7a2Pk&feature=youtu.be)