Trust is the foundation of Agile Work

I came across this on the Agile Advice blog. I agree with Mishkin wholeheartedly. The need for trust is one of the least understood aspects of agile processes as far as I’m concerned. I constantly think about how developers can earn the trust and how they break the trust of both management and customers. Here’s the quote from Agile Advice:

Trust is the Foundation of Agile Work

Technology, tools, process, even good ideas and good organizations do not create trust. People create trust by being trustworthy: honoring their commitments, striving for excellence, truthfulness, courage. One of the fundamental problems afflicting organizations is the lack of trust: between management and employees, between business and IT, between experts of various sorts, between coworkers.

This lack of trust is institutionalized in many ways including bureaucracy and legal frameworks. The only way to change this state of affairs is to build trust. And the only way to build trust is to embody trustworthiness in yourself so that by example and by your words you can help others to become more trustworthy. Agile methods put in place mechanisms that assist in building trust. But those mechanisms are merely a means to an end. Let us never forget that.

http://www.agileadvice.com/archives/management/index.html Posted by Mishkin Berteig at 12:27 AM