Build Trust for Your Team - Quickly!

Successful Outsourcing

Why Do We Care?

• Why spend time on building trust across your team? Will it honestly bring anything to the project bottom line?– In agile teams, individuals must take responsibility for

their work and the team must be able to trust that every member will live up to their responsibility.• Agile team members rely on each other to discuss issues,

mentor and help when questions, clarification should be pushed to product owners. If they can’t trust each other, the value behind agile is lost.

• With trust and shared responsibility, productivity and quality rise.

Imagine Two Teams

• Core Dev Team 1– Experienced, 5 person

team

– 0utsourced, remotely located from the client team

– Good communications & infrastructure

– New team, no big barriers to success

Focused early on building trust internally and across the larger DevOps team

• Core Dev Team 2– Experienced, 5 person

team

– 0utsourced, remotely located from the client team

– Good communications & infrastructure

– New team, no big barriers to success

Focused on getting right into work. No attention or overhead to building trust.

Not a Theoretical Construct

• Several studies have been done with similar situations– Examples here and here

– Studies have looked at more and less complicated situations• Virtual team offshore, nearshore, and in a combination of co-

located and off-site implementations

• Results have shown spending time early on developing trust paid strong dividends– Less overhead for management supervision

– Less rework

– Higher productivity, collaboration and satisfaction

Development of Trust for Agile Teams

• New teams have an opportunity build on a general disposition of trust, if they take advantage quickly

• The phases of team development are well understood and can be built upon

• Establishing the Team is not envisioned as a joint, onsite exercise.

• Project Team Inception & Project Organization are meant to be joint exercises, face-to-face at one of the team’s locations or an offsite

Development of Trust for Agile Teams

• Team Inception should be face-to-face & widened beyond the Dev core team. Include informal and planned activities along with planning for the project organization meetings. – Break down preconceptions,

recognize individuals, their personalities, values & skills

• Project Organization should start the transition to the working environment. Agile-based work patterns should be used, even if they feel a bit artificial at first.

Development of Trust for Agile Teams

• In the best case, the Transition to Development phase should also be done as a joint exercise– Ensure everyone is on the same

page, understands working environments, and is comfortable with operational procedures

• Development continues the building of trust by showing integrity, collaboration and benevolence. At this point, the teams have gone back to their respective locations.

And Our 2nd Team?

• What happens to the team that didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to build trust directly and quickly?– Although they start with dispositional

trust…• They are more likely to be given less

important work in the project or put on an independant, less critical, track to prove themselves

• In actual practice, the will probably not escape their reduced role in the organization.

• They will begin to feel they cannot trust the rest of the team and adopt a defensive stance that is very hard to break down later

And Our 2nd Team?

• What happens to the team that didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to build trust directly and quickly?– Work division & cultural distance will increase

• More supervision and oversight will be added• Overhead will increase and with the increased micro-

management, divisions will deepen even more• Lower productivity and trust will worsen

– In the worse cases, the virtual team is not trusted to make their own decisions or independent contributions• They become agile in name only. Their input is not requested

or trusted when it is given

Best Practices

• Don’t depend on organic trust– It may grow from a disposition to trust but if

barriers grow they can be very hard to remove. – Organic trust may seem strong, but it can be

easily lost over one bad interaction • Once it is lost, there may be no way to return to a

trusting relationship without serious intervention and facilitation

• Putting a priority on trust allows for open feedback and measurement– Face-to-face interaction, nearness builds trust

much more quickly than any application of technology and tools

– Although bringing teams together has a cost, it is more than offset by the lowering of time required to bring teams to full productivity and lowering barriers to understanding

Best Practices

• Integration of team building and the transition to shared work is critical in face-to-face interactions– The exposure of skills, abilities, and individual integrity

grow from both, but if actual work is not accomplished, the exposure of skills and understanding of shared responsibilities will not grow. • A vision of team members as whole individuals will not form and

cultural distance will not be lowered

• Actual work processes must be used during the transition, even if it feels forced at first. – Use scrum, agile processes as soon as possible

• Use a stand up to organize to take responsibility for startup planning? Why not?

Best Practices

• Team building exercises must be planned and customized to the situation– Don’t go with “cool” exercises with no explanation

of their goals or understanding of how it might fit

• Many references are available for team building but they tend to break down into two areas– Actual team building exercises – Discussions of how team building works, how

exercises are developed and run with an understanding of goals

• Gamestorming – a book and website covers both areas and many exercises from leaders in the field

• BusinessBalls – good general resource• Innovation Games – activities that are specific to

building strategies, plans and teams

Best Practices

• Simple, informal interactions are just as important as planned exercises – Leave the building! Go out to eat and sit together.

• Go somewhere new, that is unfamiliar and allows people to discover and explore together

• New cuisine, interesting location, new activity

– Generate bonds that will last because of shared experience and memories.

– Bridge cultural divides and break down personal defenses

What to Expect

• How long will it take?– Depends on the amount of planning and logistics necessary for

meetings, schedules and workloads of team members.• Planning and logistics will take a couple of weeks elapsed time in most cases

• Actual onsite can be accomplished in a week or a little more depending on the phases of team building included and the work required– Payback comes from faster ramp up to full production, improved

communication and understanding, lower risk and less disruption for project

• You many also want to consider additional joint meetings for longer projects and larger teams– Trust building is not a “one and done” exercise. Bonds weaken over

time and must be tended, groomed

What Else Does Team Building Do?

• Lower the effects of geographic and social distance– We’re not as different as we think

• Overcome differences in language and context– We may understand the same general language but our terms,

understanding and preconceptions get in the way. Face-to-face interaction lowers the fear and doubt of saying the wrong thing and being misinterpreted

• Differing tools & methodologies– Differences between approaches can be ironed out quickly

without religious wars. Goals can be exposed and compromises found.

• Communication & collaboration– A trust of intent and shared responsibility leads to open inquiry

and sharing of ideas, concepts

Final Thoughts

• Building trust in agile virtual teams is a critical part of project success– If geographic and cultural distance are great, it will certainly require

more planning and time to deal with issues– Because the risk of failure without addressing trust is great, consider if

the issues can be overcome reasonably.– In the case of outsourced software development, where agile and

DevOps practices are expected, consider using nearshore resources to lower cultural and geographic distance and the issues caused by time-shifting.

Scio Consulting has proven processes and strong experience aimed at insuring new projects and teams are productive and successful. We provide outsourced, nearshore software development for our clients in North America. We would be glad to discuss your project and how our teams can work to bring better results for you.