日本のアジャイルコミュニティとアジャイルについての質問と回答

最近、トロントで『Woman in Agile』というコミュニティが立ち上がり、参加しています。

コミュニティ専用のSlackがあって、そこではインターナショナルに会話がなされているのですが、その中でワシントンにお住まいのアジャイルコーチから日本のコミュニティに関する質問をもらいました。

質問の内容はこちら:

  1. What is the agile community like there? how big? how mature?
  2. What are some of the unique challenges faced by Agile coaches in Japan? structural? cultural?
  3. What industries are heavy into Agile? which ones are not?
  4. Finally, is there more integration of Lean and Agile in Japan because of your history/experience with Lean and Toyota?

私自身はアジャイルコーチではないので、Facebookでコーチのみなさまにご意見を伺ってみました。その回答が、私にのみ留めておくのはもったいないなーと感じたので、少し要約して、シェアしたいと思います。

回答をくださった、Ryuzeeさん、Mihoさん、Kiroさん、ちぇんわさん、やっとむさん、かわぐちさん、福井さん、菅野さん、北原さん、ありがとうございます!

1に関しては私の方で回答を作成しました。英語での回答も下に載せておきましたので、もしよろしかったらご参照ください。

2. What are some of the unique challenges faced by Agile coaches in Japan? structural? cultural?

構造的、文化的、どちらの問題もある。

構造的な問題:

  • 解雇規制により、SIerなどにソフトウェアはアウトソースされることが多い
    • スコープを大きくして外注を使うことで利益を上げるビジネスモデル
    • 労働集約型ビジネスになっており、アジャイルな働き方と相反する
    • 発注者側にソフトウェアに詳しい人が少ない、コンピュータサイエンス学位保持者はほぼいない
    • ソフトウェア企業の売上とエンドユーザのエンゲージメントが一致せず、品質や開発者のスキルへの投資が起こりにくい
    • 教育してエンゲージメントの高い開発者を社内に維持することでビジネスの競争力が上がるというエコシステムが回ってない
  • 組織構造がプロダクトやサービス中心ではなく、職能中心でクロスファンクショナルなチームが作りにくい

文化的な問題:

  • 予算主義や計画通りに進めることに対して偏重
  • 重要・必要なタスクにフォーカスせずに全て終わらせようとする組織的なメンタリティ
  • 本音と建前:根本的な解決や問題の発覚を避ける
  • お客様は神様:要求が非効率であってもソフトウェアを作ってしまう
  • 成果ではなくプロセスを評価、結果ではなく努力や態度を評価する
  • 判断が保守的で慎重、一方で流行に敏感なの急いで取り組んで失敗例を大量に作る
    • 挑戦よりも前例踏襲に趣をおく
    • 実践して学ぶより、論理的に辻褄が合うことを優先する
  • システム全体にかかるコストを重視し過ぎて柔軟に決済が下りない
  • コミットできない内容は承認されづらい
  • 業務が固定化しない(新しい仕事が増える)のであれば、システム開発に終わりない、というパラダイムシフトができていない
  • いまだにアジャイルへの誤解がある
    • 付箋を貼って立ってミーティング、タスクボードを使えばスクラム、みたいな
  • 英語ができない人が多いので、英語圏の知識を得る方法が翻訳(ビジネス)に頼り、間接的で遅く誇張されエラーを含みやすい
  • 東南アジアのアジャイルコミュニティに比べると日本は極端に女性の参加が少ない

3. What industries are heavy into*1 Agile? which ones are not?

  • 業種は産業は関係ない、これらは言い訳に使われることは多いけど、色々やってる会社は業種に限らずやっている
  • 金融系の企業は規制産業で大変ではあるが、たとえばアクサ生命なんかは数年前から取り組みを始めてて、最近事例として出回っている

4. Finally, is there more integration of Lean and Agile in Japan because of your history/experience with Lean and Toyota?

  • Leanの言葉自体が混乱しているので、Leanという言葉が何を指しているかによって異なる
    • Leanは最初生産調整の部分をソフトウェアに適用しようとしたが、そのあと生産じゃない部分が鍵であることに気づく
    • Lean StartupはLeanとは無関係

私の回答はこちら(全てのご意見を含められなかったのは残念):

1. What is the agile community like there? how big? how mature?
There are a lot of Agile communities in Japan such as Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo(RSGT), Agile Japan, Agile Process Association, and Agile Tour Osaka. I'm an organizer of RSGT and XPJUG(XP Japan User Group). RSGT will hold the 8th annual Regional Gathering next year, and about 300 people take part in it each year. XPJUG has conducted XP Matsuri('festival') every year since 2002, and we welcome about 200 attendees. I can see the variety of types of communities; small or big, every month or every year, conference or reading circle. Anyway we have many Agile communities in Japan.

And also, there are communities for software development, which is not related to Agile directly, such as programming language communities (especially Ruby!), and communities for software engineers, one of which has 2500 participants in its conference.
I think that the Japanese Agile community has become the second generation*2. In 2009 to 2014, many communities for newbies were the most active, but recently they have been not so active. However, new communities for newbies started to be formed from 2016.

You seem to be interested in women's presence in Japanese Agile communities, but unfortunately it's not so good. I think that it's because of cultural and structural problems, and Agile itself is not the problem. For example, generally speaking, many women can't continue their work after they give birth because we don't have a culture of baby sitting, it's difficult to find a preschool, husbands work for many hours and do not help their wives, and their parents live far away... Moreover, Japanese software engineers usually work at their client's company for hourly unit prices, which means that it's not flexible. So, in Japan, it's really hard for women to keep their job and join tech communities if they have kids.

2. What are some of the unique challenges faced by Agile coaches in Japan? structural? cultural?

I asked Agile coaches about this question. According to them, they face structural and cultural challenges. The structural challenge comes from legislation that does not allow a company to fire an employee easily. So, a lot of companies outsource engineers from other software companies or system integrators because they don't want to take the risk of hiring them by themselves. Usually, the contract is to develop all functions that they planned before signing it, and software companies tend to expand the scope of products because it's their sales. And if a company outsources a development, they should have management skills, and fundamental engineering and computer science knowledge at least; we, however, can see such a situation rarely. This is like a labor-intensive industry, where huge system integrators also outsource engineers from other small companies, then a team member who is collected like that, is not a self-organized person usually, and they need to be controlled by a manager. Therefore, these factors obstruct the increase of agility in software development in Japan.

And also, there are a lot of cultural challenges; an organization is divided by function, so it's difficult to organize a cross-functional team, and Japanese people tend to conduct projects by following the plan or budget exactly, and make a decision conservatively and carefully, which means they are not adaptable and they avoid challenging convention. Furthermore, a process is more important than its result for Japanese people; most people care about effort or attitude than consequences, so those people believe that working for long hours is good even though they don't have any tasks that they should do immediately.

3. What industries are heavy into Agile? which ones are not?

I asked this question as well. Everyone who answered this says that the type of industry does not matter. Even thought companies may be huge and traditional such as banks or medical care, they recently started to adopt Agile. As I mentioned, the Japanese Agile space has many challenges and the adoption rate is still lower than other countries, but the situation is changing gradually.

4. Finally, is there more integration of Lean and Agile in Japan because of your history/experience with Lean and Toyota?

I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with Lean. According to an expert, 'Lean' has a lot of meanings, and the definition is confusing now; originally, Lean was an idea to adapt a production adjustment system in the Toyota Production System to software development. Some people, however, discovered later that the key points of Toyota's system are in other areas. Besides, Lean Startup isn't Lean. So, the answer to your question depends on what 'Lean' means.
I wonder whether people in your country discuss Lean and Agile separately or not.

*1:"be heavy into" の意味を勘違いしていて"difficult"的な意味かなと思っていたら"really interested in..."のカジュアルな言い回しだったようです(ネイティブ談)。でも回答としては遠からずだったので、そのまま回答してしまいました。

*2:あくまでも東京の状況をみて私が感じている、という話です。