The Truth About Working Agreements
Why do we need Working Agreements in Agile World?
Forming a set of working agreements can be considered as the first step for creating a positive and productive team dynamics.
A well-written working agreement promotes a culture of understanding and respect, along with an increased share of responsibility.
How to kickstart a working agreement?
Working agreements should be written with a collaborative mindset, created by all, not imposed from above. In order to get the most out of this activity, all forms of working agreements need to be discussed and decided together, and maybe more importantly, all working agreements should evolve with the team.
As a term it is usually referred to as a single “Working Agreement” but in reality, it’s comprised of many individual agreements for each topic or issue.
How to write an effective working agreement?
1. Focus on creating a common ground
This is extremely important especially from a perspective of creating a shared understanding of why the team actually needs working agreements.
This phase is extremely critical and needs to be handled by an Agile Coach because the team will need a facilitator to communicate effectively and spread the knowledge. A fundamental figure (and servant leader) such as Agile Coach or Scrum Trainer can definitely help the team understand the importance of commitment to working together and supporting each other in order to reach the common goal.
2. Define shared protocols and patterns of interaction
Another important fact regards to creating working agreements is each working agreement needs collaborative work amongst team(s) and team members.
Group discussions need to be conducted and all terms and conditions that the team has agreed upon should be filtered out of these discussions. Ultimately the team should agree on minimum three types of actions:
i. Actions that can be done
ii. Actions that should/should not be done
iii. Actions that must/must not be done
Having answers to all questions above with a team level consensus will pretty much cover all ambiguity about “How do we do things?”
Working agreements reinforce good behaviors and help establish more clear expectations for the team. Creating an agreed list before the actual work starts will clear out many unanswered questions throughout the development lifecycle and will ease minds when things get blurry.
Working agreements brings clarity and acts as a lighthouse when the team faces challenging situations during the development phase like a ship gets to lose its course in the immense ocean.
3. Characteristics of an Effective Working Agreement
· Public and Visible- preferably written in a large font and posted in a prominent space
· Collaborative- created by all, not imposed by others or above
· Shorter- a small list of agreements that can easily be remembered as opposed to a long list that overwhelms team and eventually gets forgotten. Pareto Principle is a very effective technique that helps to focus only on the important tasks.
· Updated Frequently- Team working agreements will change as the team evolves facing unpredictable challenges. Because of circumstances always tend to change in work-place, team working agreements also need to keep up with this change
· Violation- when the agreements are violated, team members call out the violation
4. Simple guidelines to care for your Working Agreement
a. Keep your working agreement visible to the team –Don’t lock it away in a DropBox folder, it gets much harder to refer to when needed. It’s highly beneficial for teams to post their working agreements (virtually or literally on the wall) during Scrum ceremonies or keep the core agreed with items written on the whiteboard (it gets really handy during team events and meetings)
b. Team working agreements will change as the team evolves and project circumstances fluctuate. Review the working agreement periodically to make sure it covers the actions the team needs to work on — this can be a great retrospective discussion by the way.
Bonus: Real-life examples of working agreement items that I’ve come across so far include:
- If a team member is struggling(impediment), offer help right away — don’t wait for the perfect time (this also refers to “Broken Window Theory”)
- Show respect to others, create space for everyone to speak up, appreciate other’s opinions. Try to become a better manager.
- Be on time for team meetings (Or buy lunch for everyone!)
- If you have issues with a team member speak to him/her directly before sharing it with someone else in the team as it extremely affects the dynamics of the team
*If you would like to learn more about Agile and Scrum, please visit my website. I publish at least one new article every week.
Yaz has 10 years of experience in Fortune 500 companies and global engineering firms managing mission-critical information technology and large-scale software development projects. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics Engineering and several professional certifications including Project Management Professional (PMP®), Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP®), Certified ScrumProfessional® (CSP®), Scrum Master Certified (SMC™), ITIL®(Information Technology Infrastructure Library) v4 Foundation and Six Sigma Green Belt.
