Working Agreement – Part 1
Working agreements, or explicit norms or social contracts, are the rules of engagement between the individuals working together.
These agreements detail what each person will give and receive throughout their working relationship, including
- how team members will interact
- what they expect of each other
- how they will handle problems
Usually, each rule of engagement is called an agreement and collected together, the agreements are termed the working agreement.
Making social standards explicit for teams may feel unfamiliar. Some team members may feel awkward when asked to write down what seems to be obvious, professional behavioral expectations, but doing so is important. When team members don’t clarify mutual expectations, they tend to make assumptions about what the other person wants or intended.
Benefits:
Working agreements are a key ingredient in making a good team great! Research shows that the teams who invest in creating working agreements outperform those who do not.
- The benefit of creating specific spoken or written working agreements is to bring to light expected behavior around certain situations that might limit a team’s productivity and happiness – and spell out how team members should respond.
- Working agreements make the implicit explicit, which allows teams to inspect and adapt them to ensure the agreement continues to serve the team.
- It helps design a desirable and joyful work environment.
- It provides teams a huge head start to help teams get in front of many issues and sticking points before they even happen.
- Working agreements help teams set boundaries and determine expected behavior when the conflict occurs to keep the conflict constructive and non- toxic. Note that conflict should not be avoided as they lead to creativity and innovation and working agreement helps make the conflict healthy.
- Explicit working agreements increase team accountability especially if the team revisits them and make improvements as they continue to work together.
- Helps introduce the new team members to group culture more quickly and effectively.
- Working agreements help increase the psychological safety and trust in teams as they ensure interactions stay positive and productive.
When to Create Working Agreements:
Working agreements should ideally be created when the team is formed, but never too late to create one, if it does not exist. You need only the justification that “this will help us work better together.”
Updating Working Agreements:
Working agreements should be adapted over time – your first draft does not need to be your final draft. The working agreement can be updated any time e.g.
- When a new team member joins or leaves
- When a friction takes place in a team and there is nothing in working agreement in it. As a scrum master, when you notice friction, call it out and ask if there’s a working agreement that informs this situation. If not, then ask the team what they want to do about it and add that decision to the working agreement.
- When team ask for it
- At regular cadence like once a quarter or once a year
- When a team continues to break the rules of engagement consistently.
See Part 2
