Does Your Agile Team Have a Social Contract?

You may be wondering, what is a social contract? Does my team really need one? Don’t worry, you are not alone. There are many agile and project management professionals I have spoken to who have not been exposed to this concept, myself included, until recently.

A few months ago, I was introduced to social contracts by a colleague, and as a Project Manager, I’ve found it’s the ideal tool to have in your tools and techniques kitty to help achieve team coherence.

So what is it?

A social contract is an agreement between the members of your project team regarding how the team will work together and the expected behaviour of all members. It is unique to a particular project team and is not something that is transferable to another team.

The whole project team must come together to discuss and establish clear guidelines on how the team would hold each member accountable and how differences and member dissatisfaction will be addressed.Social contracts can be very simple, they probably don’t even need to be in a document format, it can be a word document, a page in Confluence but it must be someplace all team members can easily access it. The main requirement is it must have agreement and buy-in from your entire team.

And the benefits are:

• Each member of the project team feels their input is valuable and they are being heard
• Instils a sense of responsibility and accountability amongst team members
• Discourages negative behaviour
• Each member understands the expectations the team has from them

How do I create one?

Set aside a time when all your team members are available to discuss and flesh out a social agreement. It is important all team members participate in creating the contract since the whole team (not just the PM) owns the contract, therefore every member’s point of view must be considered and discussed prior to reaching an agreement.

Steps to create a great social contract

1. Organise a workshop to flesh out the agreement based on your team’s availability.
2. Decide on the items you would like your team to agree on. For an agile project team, this may be in regards to managing emergent scope, raising risks and anything else that may need discussion and agreement with the whole team.
3. Send out an agenda with the social contract discussion items you would like to include in and actively solicit feedback from the team. Is there anything new they would like to include? Ask them to come prepared to the workshop with their questions or suggestions.
4. In the workshop, discuss each of the items in the contract with the team, actively seek your team’s feedback, and get consensus on each contract item. Record what was agreed for each contract item.
5. At the end of the workshop, document and send out the social contract to all team members.
6. Review the social contract regularly.

An example of a social contract for one of my project teams:

It is the important to remember that the PM does not own the social contract, the whole team including the PM does and it is every member’s responsibility to ensure that behaviours not agreed to in the contact are called out and rectified. The contract will only work if every member believes in it.

10 ways to make your social contract stick

A social contract is an agreement between the members of your project team regarding how the team will work together and the expected behaviour of all members.

It is unique to a particular project team and is not something that is transferable to another team.  

The whole project team must come together to discuss and establish clear guidelines on how the team would hold each member accountable and how differences and member dissatisfaction will be addressed.

So, how do you make sure your social contracts stick? We’ve put together the following 10 suggestions.

1. Keep a boilerplate of team agreements and re-use when appropriate. New agreements will make the list or drop off the list depending on how the team is working together. The trick is for it to evolve as the team does.  
2. In the initial phases of a team forming, an agreement might be 'Don’t fight the framework' but after a few months, the agreement may change to 'Add to the framework'.  
3. Try to keep the agreements to a few words so they can be used like a mantra, e.g. 'Don’t fight the framework'. When they are a few words they are easier to remember and repeat with clarity.
4. Make them visible. Don’t allow them to be buried in the depths of your Confluence space.  
5. Use the social contract as a basis for feedback with either direct feedback or via a team retro. Refer to it and provide examples of convergence or divergence.  
6. The whole team should be involved in its preparation and try to make it fun and memorable. Try building your social contract with LEGO where the shapes of blocks represent your agreements. There are heaps of fun ways to facilitate a social contract session with your team.  
7. This is your time to say what behaviour you expect out of your teammates. Think, if you would not accept it from your partner, kids, and friends – then will you accept it from your workmates?  
8. Make sure all new team members are on-boarded effectively by including a run-through of the social contract. This step is often missed.  
9. A social contract allows for psychological safety, so treat it like a blueprint for being happy at work.  
10. You can start at any time and make it as simple as required. For example, it could just start out as an agreement to be at stand-ups on time. Then as challenges emerge, build on it.

Need a hand putting your social contract together? Contact us, we’ll sort you out.

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