Trust

Why

Trust is the foundation of any well-functioning team. Lack of trust brings control. Control kills creativity.

How

Trust is not just there on day one. We need to build trust together. Between stakeholders, Product Owner and Development Team. The Designed Partnership Alliance helps, working together in co-preparation helps, and working closely together during the sprints helps. But generally we see that delivering good results are the best source of trust. And good results come from good communication, being transparent, give and receive feedback, continuously improve. So start doing those things, even when trust isn’t there yet. That is leadership. Once trust is there, awesome software gets built.

Real Life Example

In a large project that ran for over a year with a Kabisa team of six developers, the Product Owner[1] was a person who had trouble trusting people in general, initially with no exception for the Kabisa developers. He started micromanaging the team members, which caused a lot of unhappiness in the team. After a number of failed attempts to fix this during regular retrospectives, we started organising “internal retrospectives” (i.e. without the Product Owner) as an emergency measure. During these internal retrospectives, team members motivated each other to persist in giving feedback to the Product Owner and being transparent, and improve on timely and clear communication towards him. The situation improved slowly, and after 4 or 5 sprints, the need for the internal retrospectives was gone.

Notes

  1. Product Owner - The Product Owner plays a crucial role in the development of a great software product. He or she is responsilble for maintaining the Product Backlog.