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Technique Guide 4 Working Agreements

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Technique Guide 4 Working Agreements

Uploaded by

pranavvikas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Whether you call them “Working Agreements” or “Team Norms” or “Rules of

Engagement” or another name, what is key to the effectiveness of your team is


that you have them. People are different with varied needs, wants, perceptions
and assumptions. We want to understand and honor those differences. We want to
establish common ground that honors those differences and creates an empowered
teamwork culture. Inviting each team member to contribute to and commit to how
they work together and interact builds safety and trust. It solves problems before
they become problems. It sets a foundation that gives the team an edge towards
success.

Working agreements are developed by the team for the team. They are the guidelines
that define how the team wants to work together. It opens the door for conversation
about what they need in the working environment from each other to feel safe and
free to learn, discover, design and deliver. They describe positive behaviors that need
to be present for the group to be most effective.

These commitments tend to have the best contribution to teamwork if they…

• are simple and direct, yet precise enough to understand what they look like in
action.

• are limited in number yet include enough to make a difference.

• are visible – posted on the wall for collocated teams or on a team page or other
visible place for virtual teams. Sometimes posting at the beginning of meetings
stimulates a reminder.

• are “living” – referred to in meetings and conversations and revised for


improvement when needed.

• can be shared with new people joining the team quickly.


Is it the responsibility of the Business Analyst to facilitate developing working
agreements with the team? Yes, maybe. As a bridge builder, BA’s can demonstrate
their teamwork and leadership by paying attention to how their team is working
together and to anything that is getting in the way. A substantial amount of issues
with project releases funnel down to some type of breakdown in teamwork. A
Product Owner, Scrum Master, Project Manager or other team member may have
facilitated the development of the Working Agreements. The BA can add value to
the team by keeping them visible and alive. If someone else has not led the team to
develop and commit to Working Agreements, then, yes, it is the responsibility of the
BA.

Example Approaches

Working Agreement exercise


This has been adapted from Esther Derby and Diana Larsen’s 5 step structure from
their book Agile Retrospectives and Bevan Williams on medium.com. The five steps
can be summarized as follows:

• Set the stage — Goal: Set the tone and direction.

• Gather data — Goal: Create a shared memory; highlight pertinent information


and events.

• Generate insights — Goal: Think creatively; look for patterns, themes and


connections.

• Decide what to do — Goal: Generate and prioritize valuable, clear actions.

• Close — Goal: Summarize and end the meeting .

Time estimates have been added as an example for a 45-minute meeting.

1 Set the stage (3 mins)


Describe what the purpose of the exercise is. The following introduction and description
of what a working agreement is, and how it can benefit a team is a basic example:

“Becoming a team involves commitment to working together and supporting each


other in our common goals. This commitment is supported by contributing to writing
what all team members believe are important protocols for the team to comply with to
maximize their capabilities to deliver faster and with higher quality.”

2 Gather Data (7 mins)


Have each team member write down things that are most important to them to
achieve this. Generally, this will be done on sticky notes and added to a whiteboard.
Start by giving people time to think and write down their own before posting.
For remote teams, you can use a whiteboard from your conferencing tool or there are
other tools like FunRetros  or  Web Whiteboard.

Like a retrospective, you can decide to strengthen focus by having each team
member limited to 3 items, or you can gather more data by having no restriction on
this. It’s important to encourage at least 2 items from each team member.

3 Generate Insights (15mins)
Discuss each item added by the team members and start grouping items which seem
to relate to each other. Do this as part of open discussion on each topic to gather
enough context to see if it can be grouped with something similar, or if it’s something
different. Make sure to encourage participation from all team members by asking
questions like “X, what do you think about this?”, etc.

Optional — if you want to limit the number of groups based on their importance to
the team, keeping focused on the “most important items”, you can then use voting to
determine priority. This is optional because some teams have found value in this, while
others have not. Use your team’s discretion on whether there are “too many” items
are not. If no such phrases, or comments, are mentioned then the grouping can just be
used as is in the next step. Voting is also useful if there are many conflicting views on
how to do things. What we want here is consent over consensus, i.e. consent is where
no one objects, and consensus is where everyone agrees.

4 Decide What To Do (15 mins)

For each group, make sure that there are clear actions for each item where
applicable. If, for example, a group of items allude to how we deal with external team
requests or unplanned issues, it’s useful as a team to agree on how we will respond
to this. We can create actions like “Must be discussed with PO”, “Must be groomed
according to our story format respecting Definition of Ready” and “PO will update
external part with expected delivery based on team capacity and discussion”.

It’s important to remind the team that these actions are not set once off. They can
(and should) change as we learn more about working together. Retrospectives are
a good time to have an action that changes an existing working agreement if we
realize it’s an impediment to working better together.

5 Close (5 mins)

Summarize and close the meeting. Make sure someone has taken ownership of
documenting the Working Agreement and making it visible.

This is also a good time to gather feedback from the team on the usefulness/
effectiveness of this format for future usage. This can be done by fist-to-five voting.
Working Agreement Canvas (see Template below)
Creating the canvas can be a fun and meaningful team activity. Consider starting
with a few of the modules in the canvas and adding more on a regular cadence.
For some of the modules, like Norms & Guidelines, a collaborative team meeting is
more conducive to discussion and commitment. Remember that commitment and
agreement is imperative for effectiveness.

Some other ideas include:

• Naming the team and creating a team motto can be done as a team challenge
and then vote for selection.

• Superpowers (Strengths & Skills) can be gathered from each team member. Post
them and have people guess which person has the superpower.

• Have each team member complete their information on the Stakeholder Map
and then review together to reach agreement on roles and responsibilities.

• Use polls and team demographics to complete the Team Statistics. A guessing
game to have team members match individual to statistic may be fun.

• The Team Quote can be changed on a cadence. Rotation across team members
can be enlightening.

Templates
The template provided is meant for you to customize appropriately to help you to get
started. Based on your needs and the needs of your team, project, product and/or
stakeholders thoughtfully add, revise or delete elements after you have downloaded
the template.

Working Agreement Canvas


Working Agreement Examples
Functional Working Agreement Example

©2019 International Institute of Business Analysis

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