The Agile Wilderness: Principle #5: Motivation and Trust

New 12 part article series on the agile principles

This new series will focus on going through each of the 12 agile principles. (1) In each article I will:

• Discuss the various aspects of the principles as well as the concepts and topics I have seen come up in my experience working in agile environments.
• Discuss relation to the Scrum values and SAFe scaled principles
• Discuss if there is anything I would change or update about how the original agile principle was written to make it more relevant for today.

I plan to get out a new article out every 2-4 weeks. Hope you enjoy the series and as always reach out or comment to engage in the discussion. Without further ado let's jump in.

Agile Principle #5: "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done."

Image from medium.com (2)

Digging into the agile principle

This principle is my favorite and the one I always talk a little bit extra about when presenting a basic agile 101 training. I believe it forms basis for an agile culture and the backbone to any successful agile implementation.

The first part of the principle talks about motivation (3) of individuals. This ties into principle #11 around being self-organized but the focus is really that people care about the problems they are solving and excited about the work they are doing. If someone is not passionate about what they are working on then they will bring the whole team down. It is core for the team to be successful that each member of the team cares about what they are solving and knows how what they are doing makes an impact for the customer.

Leadership must provide the vision and support for the team to be motivated. This is the second part of the principle. We need to make sure there is a culture within the organization that supports the team and empowers them to be successful. You may have heard the term servant leadership (4) which focuses on making sure leaders are putting the needs of others first and helping people develop and perform as highly as possible.

This leads to the last part of the principle which focuses on trust which is what an agile culture is based on. We trust (5) each other in the team to get the work done and we gain the trust from our stakeholders and customers to deliver value to the organization and customers. Trust is earned by doing what you say and providing visibility when we run into issues as soon as possible. To learn more about the importance of trust and how it forms the foundation for a strong team I would recommend "the 5 dysfunctions of a team". (6)

Comparing the agile principle to Scrum values and SAFe scaled principles

Within Scrum we see similar thoughts come out within the Commitment, Respect, and Openness scrum values. (7) As mentioned earlier there is an expectation that the team is passionate about the problem they are solving for the customer, which we see in the scrum value of commitment. They also must respect and be open with each other to build and maintain trust within the team and with stakeholders, which we see in the scrum values of respect and openness.

Within SAFe we see this directly tied into the scaled principles #8 and #9 around Motivation and Decentralized decision-making. (8)

The scaled principle #8 from SAFe around motivation takes the original agile principle to the next level. To provide people with motivation we must first give them autonomy and purpose within a trusting environment to be successful. It brings in the concepts of making sure we recognize our team members as knowledge working that can contribute to the ideation and innovation of the product we are building. As Marty Cagan says we want missionaries with a shared motivation and vision not mercenaries who are just following what they are being told to do. This idea of each of us being a missionary helps the team solve the complex problems in front of them together.

The scaled principle #9 from SAFe around decentralized decision-making builds on the idea of setting up the right environment for the team. As discussed earlier, empowerment is key to allow teams to adapt and navigate the problems they are trying to solve. We need to give the team the power to respond to changes as they see fit within certain parameters. SAFe defines these parameters on when to do centralized vs. decentralized decisions shown below which can help provide guidance to the team.

Suggested changes to the original agile principle

I would recommend changing the wording at the start of the principle from "projects" to "products and/or teams".

"Build products/teams around motivated individuals..."

There has been a movement away from projects to products which started over the last few years. A book "projects to products" by Dr. Mik Kersten (9) helped led the way for this conversation and Marty Cagan continues to conversation through his book "inspired" (10) and a movement toward a product mindset. The idea is that we want to form teams that are focused on a long-term customer outcomes and a complex problems to solve. This allows the team to be empowered to experiment around how to solve the problem for our customers and meet the customer outcomes we are trying to achieve rather than handing a team a set of scope to execute on.

As for what to change it to, Teams would be more generic and ties in well with the overall goal of what this principle is trying to get at. Another option could be to replace the idea of project (short lived / time bound solution implementation) more directly with product (long lived customer outcome focused). You could also replace it with product teams bringing both concepts into the mix.

Closing

In closing I think agile principle #5 is key to set the appropriate culture for an agile mindset and implementation to thrive. Here is a quick summary of the comparisons and changes I would suggest for reference.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and as always feel free to reach out to discuss further or drop a comment below to join the discussion. Thank you for your time and look forward to sharing my thoughts about "Principle #1: customer value" next time.

About the Author

Jeff Mortimer (#theAgileMoose) is an Agile Enthusiast with over 10+ years of experience working in various roles on agile teams including business analyst, product owner, scrum master, team leader, technical delivery manager and now an agile coach consultant focused on product transformations. In additional to his certifications in CBAP, AAC, and CSP-PO, Jeff has presented at several conferences throughout North America and joined the blogger universe a couple years ago to bring a voice to the everyday agile practitioners. He also just received his Executive MBA at Quantics School of Business and Technology. He is a husband to an amazing intelligent wife who has her doctorate in math education, father to kids who bring him joy every day, friend that brews beer and plays soccer, and citizen who helps organize volunteers to give back to the community.

Follow #theAgileMoose for the latest insights in the agile wilderness.

References

(1) Agile Principles from agile alliance

(2) Principles Image from medium.com

(3) Motivation image from investperforms.org

(4) Servant Leadership from slidemodel.com

(5) Trust from scottpatchin.com

(6) "The 5 dysfunctions of a team" by Patrick Lencioni

(7) Scrum Values from scrum.org

(8) SAFe Scaled Principles from scaledagileframework.com

(9) "Projects to Products" by Dr. Mik Kersten

(10) Product Mindset and book "Inspired" by Marty Cagan in Silicon Valley Product Group (svpg.com)