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Stakeholder Trust

TL; DR: Stakeholder Trust

Trust is the beginning of everything. I am hesitant to recycle an old slo-

gan of a banking institute. However, in the context of becoming a
learning organization and embracing business agility, it condenses the
main challenge perfectly: How shall we convince the incumbents with
vested interests in the status quo to give the new way of working the
benefit of the doubt? Join me and delve into how distrust manifests
and what we can do to earn stakeholder trust.

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Trust According to the Scrum Guide

Trust is the foundation of empiricism, allowing for transparency, in-

spection, and adaptation. Nevertheless, the Scrum Guide 2020 men-
tions trust just once in the context of Scrum Values:

These values give direction to the Scrum Team with

regard to their work, actions, and behavior. The decisions
that are made, the steps taken, and the way Scrum is
used should reinforce these values, not diminish or
undermine them. The Scrum Team members learn and
explore the values as they work with the Scrum events
and artifacts. When these values are embodied by the
Scrum Team and the people they work with, the empirical
Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation
come to life building trust.

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Source: Scrum Guide 2020.

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The sparse notion of trust in the Scrum Guide should not come as a
surprise, given that it focuses on how to make Scrum work for your or-
ganization once you decide it is useful and the organization supports
the decision of its introduction. Scrum is a very effective practice, and
it shows in the Scrum Guide, detailing the interconnected aspects of

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this delivery system. It is, however, less concerned about the pre-req-
uisites of its introduction to an organization.

In practice, given that Scrum is an excellent probe into any

organization’s dysfunctions, it turns out that precisely these pre-requi-
sites regularly pose the most significant obstacles to its introduction.
Self-management in the sense of Scrum pushes many people into un-
comfortable territory, be it the expectation to accept more accountabil-
ity as a team member or challenging a hard-earned position in the
management hierarchy: “I’m not in entrusting my career, my ability to
pay my mortgage, and putting my kids through college to a bunch of
hoodie-wearing nerds.”

How Lack of Stakeholder Trust Manifests Itself

The discomfort of people outside of a Scrum team required to work

with a Scrum team — commonly referred to as stakeholders — mani-
fests itself often in a kind of collaboration that does not provide the
benefit of the doubt to the team but is characterized by distrust. This
lack of stakeholder trust manifests itself in various forms, for example:

Lack of Stakeholder Trust at the Organizational Level

Metered funding: The Scrum team is permanently held in limbo by

the stakeholders regarding whether they will continue its funding or
be disbanded.

Internal agency: Stakeholders do not empower Scrum teams to

solve customer problems. Instead, stakeholders hand lists of tasks
to Scrum teams to accomplish.

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Stage-Gate® vs. self-management: Stakeholders approve

Increments and decide over releases.

Reporting-driven culture: Stakeholders demand various reports

from Scrum teams but refuse to attend, for example, Sprint
Reviews.

Using unsuited metrics: OKRs are based on output metrics in-

stead of being determined by the desired outcome.

Command & control: Stakeholders create arbitrary deadlines to

push Scrum teams to higher performance levels.

Lack of commitment: Scrum is abandoned the moment there is a

challenge on the horizon.

Lack of Stakeholder Trust at the People Level

Team building I: Line managers and HR have the final say over
hiring and firing new team members.

Team building II: Stakeholders and line managers assign team

members to Scrum teams without consulting the team itself.

No slack time: Line managers believe in keeping utilization rates of

team members high. (An increasing velocity is regarded as a suc-
cess sign.)

Sub-roles within Scrum teams: Line managers insist on creating

“lead positions” within the team. There are lead engineers or lead
designers.

Hierarchies within Scrum teams: Line managers create reporting

hierarchies within Scrum teams; for example, junior developers re-
port to senior developers.

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Resources & FTEs: Line managers move “resources” between

teams without consulting the affected teams and individuals.

Incentives: The organization grants personal incentives for individ-

ual team members instead of incentivizing the whole Scrum team.

Lack of Stakeholder Trust at the Way-of-Working Level

No failure culture: “Failure is not an option.” (Solving complex

adaptive problems is inherently failure-prone.)

Separation by silos: Sales prevents Scrum team members from

talking directly to customers.

Dependencies I: The Developers do not enjoy the freedom to

choose tools.

Dependencies II: Developers cannot decide how to turn Product

Backlog items into Increments. For example, an outside software
architect is pre-defining solutions.

Imposing processes: The organization creates detailed processes

in Jira or any other project management tool outside the team’s
control, thus disempowering the team members. For example, team
members are not allowed to delete entries or change processes.

Approval gates: Scrum teams cannot decide how to spend their

training or book budgets.

How to Build Trust as a Scrum Team

Seeing is believing. In my experience, a promising way to build stake-

holder trust is to regularly deliver valuable and viable Increments as a

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Scrum team, thus making your internal and external stakeholders suc-
cessful. Achieving that level of routine value creation requires includ-
ing your stakeholders in your team’s work, giving everyone a voice,
and making them feel heard. Useful stepping stones on that path are,
for example:

Regularly deliver a valuable Increment every single Sprint and em-

brace a servant leadership attitude as a Scrum Team: make your
stakeholders look good.

Educate your stakeholders: organize workshops on how agile prod-

uct development works. Do not assume that your stakeholders are
familiar with the intricacies of “Agile” or Scrum. (Learn more: App
Prototyping with Absolute Beginners – Creating a Shared
Understanding of How Empiricism Works.)

Create an actionable Product Backlog by designing a transparent

product discovery system encouraging everyone to contribute. If
your Product Backlog process looks arbitrary, every stakeholder will
be pushed into a corner and focus on pursuing their (personal)
goals over aligning with the big picture.

Over-communicate all aspects of your Scrum team’s work; it is okay

to sound like a broken record in this regard. (Learn more: 11 Proven
Stakeholder Communication Tactics during an Agile Transition.)

Practice radical candor: be upfront with issues that impact the

scope or delivery dates, and communicate the underlying issues
immediately.

Run user story mapping workshops to learn from your stakeholders,

include them in the discovery process and build rapport with them.
Once they are a “part” of the solution, they will become more
trusting.

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Don’t ignore stakeholders’ needs; the “how much is it and when can
I have it” question is valid; your stakeholders must also meet
objectives.

Show empathy; try walking in your stakeholders’ shoes; for exam-

ple, as someone from sales attempting to meet their quota.

Include stakeholders in Sprint Reviews and organize regular meta-

retrospectives.

If necessary, write reports to satisfy their information needs. At the

same time, figure out why they need these reports and support
them to come up with something better.

Stakeholder Trust — Conclusion

Do not expect all your stakeholders to be enthusiastic about your team

just because you are practicing Scrum or other agile
practices; stakeholder trust needs to be earned. The best way to do so
is to make your stakeholders successful by regularly delivering valu-
able Increments while including them in the process of figuring out
what is worth building.

Depending on your industry and organizational culture, doing so is not

necessarily a straightforward process. So, be prepared to take some
detours along the way that are not described in the Scrum Guide.

How do you earn stakeholder trust? Please share your learnings with
us in the comments.

📖 Stakeholder Trust — Related Posts

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18/7/22, 18:00 Don't forget to read this: Stakeholder Trust — How to Earn Their ConfidenceAge of ProductAge of Product

36 Scrum Stakeholder Anti-Patterns

27 Sprint Anti-Patterns Holding Back Scrum Teams

Scrum: 20 Sprint Planning Anti-Patterns

Daily Scrum Anti-Patterns: 24+2 Ways to Improve as a Scrum Team

15 Sprint Review Anti-Patterns Holding Back Scrum Teams

21 Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns Impeding Scrum Teams

Download the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide for free.

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PUBLISHED BY

Stefan Wolpers
Stefan—based in Berlin, Germany—has been working for 16-plus years as an ag-
ile coach, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer
(PST) with Scrum.org.
He has developed B2C as well as B2B software, for star-
tups as well as corporations, including a former Google subsidiary.
Stefan curates
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the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and organizes the Agile Camp Berlin, a
Barcamp for coaches and other agile practitioners.

View all posts by Stefan Wolpers 

 2022-07-18  Stefan Wolpers  Agile and Scrum, Agile Transition  Scrum first
principles, Stakeholders

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