Trust And Project Culture

Presenters: Sallyann Freudenberg and RachelDavies

Abstract/Description:

We have seen agile working best when a project team has a complimentary culture. This differs somewhat from that of a traditional project where individuals might be encouraged to focus primarily on getting their own tasks completed.

This session aims to assist project teams in considering the culture in which they would like to work together. It draws on some basic questions regarding trust and trust-worthy behaviour:

• What behaviours elicit trust?
• What makes us feel safe?
• What are the conditions required for us to  be OK with being honest?
• How is trust shattered on a project?

These techniques can be especially useful at the start of a new project, in particular when the project team are new to each other, new to agile or have uncovered issues related to trust and honesty. They also help to provide  a non-threatening way to highlight counter-cultural behaviour should it occur.

Who will benefit?

We expect the kind of people who participate in this session will be typical XPDay attendees. Trust issues affect all roles and most people want to have some tools to build trust in teams they work in. The session may be of special interest to agile coaches, development leads, and managers who want to repair trust in their teams. There are no pre-requisites for this session and it is open and relevant to everyone.

How will it be run?

We intend to run this session as an interactive workshop of 90 minutes duration. Participants can try out the proposed approach in groups. Followed by some discussion about the usefulness of the approach and other ways to approach building trust on teams.

How will we use the time?

The time will be used as follows:

• 15 minutes - Initial introduction referencing background literature and real-world examples.
• 60 minutes - Participants try out the proposed approach in groups.
• 15 minutes - General discussion and feedback about the usefulness of the approach and other ways to approach building trust on teams.

What's the history of this session?

This session is new and has not been presented at a conference before. Although we have run a workshop like this one for teams at a client where we coached together. Both of us have experience in leading workshops at conferences.

Additional Note for program selection committee: It might be difficult to present this in Open Space because Rachel is one of the Open Space facilitators.