AgileDC - Team Culture and Social Contracts

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Building Social Contracts Early, Revisiting Them Often, and Revising When Needed AgileDC 2019 — Elijah Biggs Lean-Agile Consultant, IBM Disclaimer: This presentation is my own and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

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• Get to know each other • Discuss my experience • Explain the elements of creating, revisiting, and refining a social contract • Provide the tools, knowledge, and value proposition to invest your organization’s energy and time into social contracts • Have fun Objectives © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 3

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© 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 4 • 4+ years experience in research and federal consulting • 2 years on agile teams • Lives in Washington, DC • UMD Alum – go Terps! • Why I’m here: Build relationships, gain exposure, learn from others Elijah Introductions • Sector (Public, Commercial, etc) • Agile Exposure (SM, PO, Transformation Coach) • What brought you to the conference? • What did you learn from the first session? You - Audience

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• What: An artifact to document a teams’ desired set of values, behaviors, and social norms • Who: Can be made by any group of individuals working together, recommended facilitator outside of team • When: On Day 1 and iterated through time • Where: In the team’s collocated area • How: Large notepad on easel, whiteboard wall (physical) or word processing program and printed Basics of a Social Contract © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 10 Got it? We’ll make one!

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Theory • Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract • Naturalized and Normative Social Contracts • Agile Principle #5: Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. Practice • Managing Personalities • Managing Problems • Creating Policies and Best Practices In Theory and In Practice © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 11

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Two teams of similar size, work complexity, experience • Different levels of churn – one high, one low • Discussed the root causes of churn with the high turnover team • Belongingness, growth, and recognition • Unwritten social contract changed as: • Team members joined or left • Retrospectives revealed preferences and best practices Scenarios: Forming vs Performing • “To change culture, change the organization” –SAFe House of Lean My Experience © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 12

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Prework Hold a team building session • Egg Drop • “Yes, And” Improv Exercises Have a facilitator Begin with the end in mind • What does the end of the project look like? • Who outside of the team is involved? Constructing © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 13 • Communications • Meetings • Processes • Expectations • Norms • Ways of Working • Team-specific & location tailored • Compromises • Social Contracts for subsets of the team • Create dependencies • Create static documentation • Let voices not be heard Patterns and Antipatterns

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• Establish time to revisit the social contract • Publish the social contract in a shared space (physical) and/or digital for distributed teams • Ask the following and more: • How have the ways of working shifted through time? • How are team members interacting with the contract? • What have we learned about our customer and how do our actions and interactions have downstream affects on them? • During retrospectives, what has been learned over the last iteration? Revisiting © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 14

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Who: • Anyone on the team can signal for an update to the social contract When: • Team members joined or left • Retrospectives revealed preferences and best practices • Issues occur • Contract not being followed How: • Establish during social contract inception (recommend as soon as possible especially with issues or when contract isn’t being followed) Why: • To reach a (new) consensus • Reinforce teamwork and collaboration tactics Revising © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 15

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Social Contract: • What is it • How to construct • Why it is valuable • When to revisit and revise Today’s Outcomes © 2017 IBM Corporation / IBM Confidential 17 Many thanks to : • AgileDC • Phillip Manketo • IBM’s Public Service Lean-Agile CoE Email: [email protected] Twitter: @elipbig LinkedIn