I worked towards changing the culture of how people worked by appealing to their sense of achievement and using pride of our work as a motivator— the idea of a unified vision on web quality (not just standards and best practices).

A lot of it has to do with teaching people how to talk to one another. Mostly, it’s getting the team to understand they are in control of the project’s destiny (not just the project manager), and also encouraging team members to learn how to judge what best decisions to make and why.

I gave a workshop that touches on this in Paris Web back in 2007:
http://www.slideshare.net/stephtroeth/making-ends-meet

We had decent success while I was still at the agency, but there was still a long way to go. For example, every time there was a mass firing it takes months to patch the damage, so the method isn’t foolproof unless the greater strategy of the agency or company is solid.

I also talked about how Agile does not guarantee quality despite its collaborative philosophy in 2009: http://www.slideshare.net/stephtroeth/being-agile-being-good

By the time I was doing the agile talk though, I was mostly working in much smaller teams and I’d left the agency … if that says anything 😉