I agree that trust is important, but often, it is either:
A - Reduce to its most nocive form, blind trust
B - Weaponized against accountability or for power control
C - Use as a magic bullet to exhonerated our responsibility in the problems we have
Also, I think that the purpose of Scrum is to build trust rather than needing it. How else could we interpret this sentence in the Scrum Guide:
"When these values are embodied by the Scrum Team and the people they work with, the empirical Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation come to life building trust."
For me, all elements of Scrum are there as requirements to build trust, rather than the reverse. So, I tend to approach your points differently:
- How can you have trust if the team is not transparent? Doesn't inspect their increment honestly nor adapt to what they discover?
- The DoD defined the expectations in quality of the increments of the team: it helps aligned the team and the stakeholders, and that's why the DoD is the only part of Scrum that can be an organization standards rather than solely a team owned artifact.
- etc.
I often explain the Empiricism this way to my team: the iterative loop is a generator of trust. We start with the default values of courage, commitment, openness, respect and focus, and through the cycle of transparency, inspection and adaptation, with the goal of delivering value:
- we learn to trust our stakeholders to give us fair feedbacks allowing us to deliver better value next increment
- we earn the trust of our stakeholders in our ability to deliver value and improve regularly
- we learn to trust our teammates to work together toward a common goal
- we learn to trust the system to empower us to deliver value in a sustainable manner
- we learn to trust our own ability to deliver high value increment within a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.
I believe so strongly in that I consider an environment that don't practice such values and methods, which aren't unique to Scrum but to any enquiring endeavour, trust cannot exist and it is replaced with just a spectacle of false trusts, one of the sad masks I cited at the beginning.
Great points Nicolas. I agree with what you write here. I do however still see a basic level of trust as vital. If the organization doesn't have a basic level of trust, that the team has professionals that can work it out themselves, Scrum will not work.
This is what you may see in an hierarchical organization where the highest paid persons opinion rules.
Yes, for me, the basis is the values of Scrum. If you don't have them, you cannot have trust.
I don't like HiPPO much, which even when true, is mostly a strawman attack. Pay level has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of an opinion, and I think it is fine for an org to pay more the people that are mostly right more often. It's called recognizing expertise and experience, and it is something we should aim too.
I prefer instead referring to Authority by Title, which applies to all levels. "I'm right because I'm the CTO" is as wrong as "I'm right because I'm paid higher than you" or even "I'm right because it's my code and I'm the Network Specialist". And it's in those situations that I've seen the weaponized trust ("You should trust me because I'm the senior engineer") being used the most.
Level 1 - Governance: I trust you as an employee to do your best to meet the terms of your contract, and you trust me, as your employer to pay you fairly and give you clear expectations and actionable feedback on my performance. This is the trust earned from contractual agreement.
Level 2 - experience: I trust you because reliably deliver what I've asked you and realized the goals we set together. This is trust built in applying the Empiricism feedback loop.
Level 3 - vulnerability: Trust that allows you to be vulnerable at a personal level, like being open about your conjugal struggle or your parents trauma. Although it can be desirable to have with your coworkers and managers, it would never be a level of trust I require from my employees. It's a personal choice to give your manager that level of trust, and the idea to demand it gives me creepy vibes like in The Firm. Yet, that's the kind of trust demands by stupid "team building exercise" like going skydiving together or even letting you fall on your back blindfolded and hoping your colleagues will catch you.
I agree that trust is important, but often, it is either:
A - Reduce to its most nocive form, blind trust
B - Weaponized against accountability or for power control
C - Use as a magic bullet to exhonerated our responsibility in the problems we have
Also, I think that the purpose of Scrum is to build trust rather than needing it. How else could we interpret this sentence in the Scrum Guide:
"When these values are embodied by the Scrum Team and the people they work with, the empirical Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation come to life building trust."
For me, all elements of Scrum are there as requirements to build trust, rather than the reverse. So, I tend to approach your points differently:
- How can you have trust if the team is not transparent? Doesn't inspect their increment honestly nor adapt to what they discover?
- The DoD defined the expectations in quality of the increments of the team: it helps aligned the team and the stakeholders, and that's why the DoD is the only part of Scrum that can be an organization standards rather than solely a team owned artifact.
- etc.
I often explain the Empiricism this way to my team: the iterative loop is a generator of trust. We start with the default values of courage, commitment, openness, respect and focus, and through the cycle of transparency, inspection and adaptation, with the goal of delivering value:
- we learn to trust our stakeholders to give us fair feedbacks allowing us to deliver better value next increment
- we earn the trust of our stakeholders in our ability to deliver value and improve regularly
- we learn to trust our teammates to work together toward a common goal
- we learn to trust the system to empower us to deliver value in a sustainable manner
- we learn to trust our own ability to deliver high value increment within a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.
I believe so strongly in that I consider an environment that don't practice such values and methods, which aren't unique to Scrum but to any enquiring endeavour, trust cannot exist and it is replaced with just a spectacle of false trusts, one of the sad masks I cited at the beginning.
Great points Nicolas. I agree with what you write here. I do however still see a basic level of trust as vital. If the organization doesn't have a basic level of trust, that the team has professionals that can work it out themselves, Scrum will not work.
This is what you may see in an hierarchical organization where the highest paid persons opinion rules.
Yes, for me, the basis is the values of Scrum. If you don't have them, you cannot have trust.
I don't like HiPPO much, which even when true, is mostly a strawman attack. Pay level has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of an opinion, and I think it is fine for an org to pay more the people that are mostly right more often. It's called recognizing expertise and experience, and it is something we should aim too.
I prefer instead referring to Authority by Title, which applies to all levels. "I'm right because I'm the CTO" is as wrong as "I'm right because I'm paid higher than you" or even "I'm right because it's my code and I'm the Network Specialist". And it's in those situations that I've seen the weaponized trust ("You should trust me because I'm the senior engineer") being used the most.
A framework I like to gain more nuances when talking about trust is the three levels one (https://irc.queensu.ca/levels-of-trust-in-workplace-relationships/)
Level 1 - Governance: I trust you as an employee to do your best to meet the terms of your contract, and you trust me, as your employer to pay you fairly and give you clear expectations and actionable feedback on my performance. This is the trust earned from contractual agreement.
Level 2 - experience: I trust you because reliably deliver what I've asked you and realized the goals we set together. This is trust built in applying the Empiricism feedback loop.
Level 3 - vulnerability: Trust that allows you to be vulnerable at a personal level, like being open about your conjugal struggle or your parents trauma. Although it can be desirable to have with your coworkers and managers, it would never be a level of trust I require from my employees. It's a personal choice to give your manager that level of trust, and the idea to demand it gives me creepy vibes like in The Firm. Yet, that's the kind of trust demands by stupid "team building exercise" like going skydiving together or even letting you fall on your back blindfolded and hoping your colleagues will catch you.