Tennessee Tech University Department of Computer Science Blog

A mindset identifies our attitudes towards how we perceive the world and the situations that we encounter within it. Indeed, a mindset defines the culture of a community and can often foreign to outsiders or new members. For instance, take the example of the difference between a western mindset and an eastern mindset. A western mindset emphasizes the individual while the eastern mindset emphasizes the group. This is best illustrated by the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympic games when it was reported that while it appeared that a beautiful young girl was singing the song “Ode to the motherland” that she was merely lip-syncing to the voice of another girl that was off stage [1]. While many in the Western world were appalled at this practice, claiming that it was demeaning to both girls, others in the Eastern world claimed that the song was performed in this way for the good of the nation. The differing mindsets defined the interpretation of the performance of the song just as our mindset defines our interpretation of how we approach social situations within interpersonal, small group, and large group interactions. In relativist terms, the appropriateness of the lip-syncing practice was culturally determined.

Academic departments are constantly faced with micro and macro clashes between culture that are rooted in the mindset by which the members of the community have either learned via observation and socialization, or have brought into the environment by way of their own external experiences and expectations. According to Seidman, a characteristic that distinguishes the nature of an organizational culture is communication – specifically, how information is created, communicated, and used [2]. Unfortunately, very rarely do we ever formalize the ways in which we create, communicate, and use that information. Instead, we expect that faculty, staff, and students will learn the norms through interactions with others – first as novices but eventually as full members of the community.

Growth/Fixed Mindset from Dweck [3]. Image from CSU Health Network [http://health.colostate.edu/growth-mindset-event/].

The members of a departmental community vary and involve different stakeholder groups (e.g., students, faculty, staff, alumni, advisors, etc.). As such, the question becomes this: what should the mindset be that defines our organizational culture (i.e., the culture of an academic department) and how do we undergo a process of enculturation so that we can quickly move new members of the departmental community from being novices to fully contributing members of the community? Certainly for faculty and staff, there is a certain amount of socialization into the university community that occurs during the onboarding process. Much of this involves either mandatory training through the human resources organization, or orientation sessions meant to provide information about how to succeed (for instance, “How do I earn tenure?”). For students, we provide similar orientations or other sessions meant to provide information about curricula, student groups, or other student life issues. However, we do very little to onboard students on the mindset that we desire them to adopt at the department level because we ourselves (the faculty and staff) do not have a formalized notion of what we want that mindset to be. Instead, we get fixed on a mindset based on rituals or the familiar.

Dweck defined the notion of the growth and fixed mindsets to explain success as being a combination of both raw talent and the mindset we adopt [3]. In a fixed mindset, for instance, we might look to be risk averse or stick to what we know, while in a growth mindset we look to embrace challenges and put effort towards learning new things. Certainly, there are times and situations when we may find ourselves switching back and forth between these competing mindsets, but the goal is that in the long-term we would find ourselves operating with a growth mindset as an integral part of our nature rather than by forced or intentional action. While the growth mindset provides an ideal global mindset for internalizing one’s approach to success, as a cultural mindset a different approach may be required. That is, in order to facilitate enculturation of a mindset, we may wish to use a process of adopting a set of values, principles and practices by shepherding novices through various stages of mastery. Take, for instance, the Japanese martial art concept of shu–ha–ri. Shu-ha-ri says that we should begin down the road of mastery by first obeying a set of fundamentals (shu), gradually breaking with tradition as we detach from the illusions of self while gaining enough knowledge to begin to adjust to deviations from the norm (ha), and finally completely separating from those norms as we gain full mastery (ri). A great example of progression through the levels of mastery is moving to a new city and trying to get from Point A to Point B. At first, we use maps or other well-defined systems for directions (shu). As we learn the layout of a city we begin to vary our routes, especially as traffic patterns become evident to us (ha). Finally, as we master our surroundings, we begin to forget the directions and layouts in favor of optimization of our routes based on immediate evaluation of our surroundings (ri).

According to Bowman [4], cultural change in the academy should involve three distinct components: adoption of an attitude of professionalism whereby community members are reflecting deeply about relationship while coevolving common futures, engaging in shared and self-governance through identification of values that underpin motivation, and development of a self-correcting system of language and behaviors, whereby the norms of interaction and communication are implemented in such a way that the members of the community are engaged in continuous improvement using patterns of behavior that seek to function together more productively. As an academic department – especially one in which the ultimate focus for the vast majority of graduates is the eventual commencement into a computing career, we need to seek a mindset that creates inroads towards cultural norms that will also serve to aid students towards maturation as practicing professionals.

For a great many years, the software development industry was bogged down in a glut of failed projects that was caused, in many instances, by an inability to cope with the complexity and uncertainty of ever changing requirements. In 2001, a number of leading thought leaders in the software industry gathered to develop what they called the Manifesto for Agile Software Development [5]. Core to the creation of this then new development approach was the adoption of an Agile mindset that is grounded in the concepts of process control: inspection and adaptation. In particular, the values, principles, and practices most often associated with Agile Development encourage and promote the notion that iterative reflection and action through consistent and frequent communication provide the best avenues for adapting to complexity and the unknown when trying to move towards some desired but uncertain future. In many ways, the Agile mindset is a mindset of growth and change.

According to the 10th Annual State of Agile Survey, the use of Agile has grown immensely in software development organizations [6]. In particular, 95% of the respondents indicate that some form of Agile practice is used while only 4% of respondents indicated that they work in non-Agile organizations (as compared to 31% in 2009). 19% of respondents reported that use of Agile only began within the past year. As this trend towards adoption of Agile continues, the likelihood that a graduate of any computing program (be it ours or some other program) will end up working for an organization that has adopted, promotes, and embraces an Agile mindset is high.

Academic departments operate within a very volatile and dynamic environment. While we know that calendars are fixed (i.e., semesters always begin and end at certain times), we also know that human and financial resources are ever changing, that enrollments fluctuate, and that the science of computing is ever advancing and undergoing technological innovation. Furthermore, students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, faculty are dealing with increasing demands on their time to meet curricular, scholarly, and service goals, and staff numbers are dwindling as administration finds ways to adjust to increasingly higher costs of education. It is precisely within this kind of environment in which we are seeking to adopt a strategy that sets us on a path towards mastery of the growth mindset through development of a revolutionary change in culture, behavior, and curriculum. Our goal is to interweave Agile into the fabric of our departmental community as a way of relating, learning, educating, and operating. Specifically, our intent is not to just teach Agile to students, but to make it a cultural mindset that affects every aspect of our interactions. The mindset will permeate across all departmental activities including advising, curricular design and implementation, evaluation, assessment, research, department operations, committee work, outreach, recruiting, and so on. In the end, not only do students learn Agile as a way of working on teams and developing software, but also they will experience Agile as a way of reflecting about experience, as a way of learning, as a way of taking ownership of their learning, and as a way of adjusting to the dynamics of campus life.

The Department of Computer Science at Tennessee Tech University has already begun down this path at the staff level. In the Fall of 2016, the staff began the practice of daily standups as a way of achieving the principle of transparency through frequent communication. In addition, the staff have been engaging in monthly retrospectives as a critical part of the inspect and adapt Agile mindset. At the faculty level, conversations have begun and some initial adoption of Agile has occurred with some of the research groups. At the initial faculty meeting, the practice of Agile chartering was used to help identify shared values as we move closer to strategically planning the journey towards adoption of Agile as a departmental culture. Overall, our goals are to embrace change, to engage in reflection so that we are able to strategically prepare for change, and to prepare students for the dynamics of the ever evolving landscape of their future environments.

1. “Fake Moment in 2008 Beijing summer Olympics – What a Shame???” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKkceK_iLRg
2. Seidman, D. (2007). How: Why how we do anything means everything. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
3. Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
4. Bowman, R. (2014). Rethinking the Culture of Academic Life, Academic Exchange Quarterly, Winter 2014 ISSN 1096-1453, Volume 18, No. 1.
5. Beck, K. et al. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org/
6. Version One Inc. (2016). 10th Annual State of Agile Report, Online available at http://stateofagile.versionone.com