Author: Savita Pahuja

Working Agreement

People in different locations take punctuality differently. Therefore, when teams have common meetings across locations they need to understand other team members perspective related to time sensitivity. For example, In North America and in India being “on time” typically allows for a 5-minute grace period because of traffic and transportation hiccups. In contrast, “on time” in Germany is arriving 5 minutes early.

When Savita works with teams, she helps team create working agreement. Working agreement is a set of norms, the team creates to follow without fail to make themselves more efficient and successful. It is a very powerful technique because it is being established by a good discussion which surfaces different mindsets and behaviours and help people come to a common ground. Teams use it to setup scrum ceremonies time and grace periods as well as what will happen if someone doesn't follow the agreement.

Working agreement is also helpful to assess their assumptions and ask themselves why they hold those ideas or beliefs. By doing this and discussing with others, the initial barrier to intercultural communication can be overcome.