Collaboration Workbook
Craig Brown
Heart of Agile | Collaboration
LAST CBR | 2018 edition

Your Story
What was the situation
What happened that demonstrated collaboration?
What made the collaboration great?
What did you learn from your observation?
Describe a situation where you saw excellent collaboration at work

Do this, please
1. Fill in this workbook to help think about what collaboration means
for you, and how you want to improve.
2.Repeat the workbook online to help us study what collaboration is for
people, and what we are collectively doing about it.
https://goo.gl/sRvREN
3. Try this workbook as a retrospective activity with your team

Agenda
1. Your story
2. Know why collaboration is valuable
3. Know what collaboration looks like
4. Understand the cost of Collaboration
5. Diagnose the situation
6. Understand the people
7. System conditions that foster collaboration
8. Tools for collaboration
9. Permission to act
10. Experiment forward
Questions first.
Then I share
information
that I have
gathered.

collaboration is valuable
List at least three reasons why we think collaboration is valuable.

Your horizons
Me
My team
Our company
Our
customers
Our
community
Horizon Benefits of collaboration
Me
My team
Our organization
Our customers
Our community

Your horizons
Me
My team
Our company
Our
customers
Our
community
Horizon Benefits of collaboration
Me
My team
Our organization
Our customers
Our community

What collaboration looks like
1.What does
collaboration look
like for you today?
1.What does better
collaboration look
like?
And better?
And better?

1.You
The team
The company
The customer
The community
Understand the cost of Collaboration
List the most important costs of collaboration
Me
My team
Our
company
Our
customers
Our
community

System conditions that foster collaboration
1. List things that
encourage and
discourage
Collaboration.
2. Circle the ones
that you can make
a difference to.
Encourage Discourage

Diagnose the situation
Model the system; parts, connections, contexts and people?
What incentives and disincentives are baked into the
system?
What are the sources of authority that people use?
Pay attention to the power dynamics; who lifts people up
and who shuts people down? How and why?
What interventions can you try?
How do you know they will work?
Do you act with consent or not?
What use of power and authority are you going to employ?
Does it fit with the target?
What leverage points exist in your
situation?

Tools for collaboration
Examples;
• Colocation, travel and AV infrastructure
• Slack, etc
• Visualization
• Shared goals
• Agreements on how we operate
• Shared spaces
• Quiet spaces
• Meeting rooms
• Whiteboards
What are the current gaps in your
tooling and physical setup?

Permission to act
Remember this;
• People need to know what your authority is
based upon
• Match your use of power and authority
• Getting permission
• Building trust on behavior and knowledge
• Change management is a shared journey
What things should you focus on
to increase collaboration?

Hypothesis/Hunch Experiment Measure/Check
Experiment forward
What will you do next month?

What I found

Locus of concern
Me
My team
Our company
Our customers
Our
community
• Bringing diverse skills and knowledge
together
• Diversity also tends to mirror the real
world (where customers live) so you
get more empathy and insights
• You care about your team mates and
put in energy and effort for them
• We want to impress our team mates
• You learn to trust in your team
members and can shortcut to results
• Safety in numbers

What collaboration looks like
1. What does
collaboration look
like for you
today?
2. What does better
collaboration look
like?
3. And better?
4. And better? Dr Neil Preston, from Perth

System conditions that foster collaboration
• Recognize what
things encourage
and discourage
Collaboration
• Let’s make a list.
Encourage Discourage
Ask permission
Go first
Be consistent
Do what you say you will do
Admit mistakes and apologize
Know everyone is doing their best
Admit when you don’t know
Ask for help
Shared goals
Shared spaces
Coach your peers
Be authentic
Act with integrity
Know the boundaries and rules
Know when to break them
Coherent values and behaviors
Be honest
Be kind
Competing goals
Unclear goals
Unclear boundaries
Unclear decision making protocols
Scarce resources
Competition over collaboration
Individually assigned tasks and activities
Uncertainty about the future
Personal consequences
Incongruent behavior
Not knowing people

Responses so far

What did we do?
On the 17th May we hosted a Heart of Agile meetup here in
Melbourne and asked attendees to work though a printed
workbook while Craig led a discussion via a projected version of
the workbook.
Participants wrote their answers down, sometimes only partially
answering questions.
Subsequent to the meetup Craig also posted the workbook as a
google form and gathered a handful of additional responses, but
the majority of responses were collected in the meetup.
The workbook asked participants to answer a number of
questions about collaboration to help people reflect on what it
looked like for them and what they could aspire to.
We named the workbook “The 8 Steps to Collaboration.”
Survey Analysis Findings Insights

Look at what we
found
I read through the results and categorized
the answers against Dr Neil Preston’s
taxonomy.
This is where a crowd of Meetup going
Advanced Agile practitioners rated their
collaboration capabilities.
Benchmarks for my evaluation:
Co-creation - sharing problems and soft
boundaries on roles and responsibilities
Collaboration – working together on
solutions, sharing knowledge, helping each
other
Cooperation – working as instructed but
generally without conflict
What does collaboration
look like for you today?

Look at what we
found
I read through the results and categorized
the answers against Dr Neil Preston’s
taxonomy.
This is where a crowd of Meetup going
Advanced Agile practitioners rated their
collaboration capabilities.
Benchmarks for my evaluation:
Co-creation - sharing problems and soft
boundaries on roles and responsibilities
Collaboration – working together on
solutions, sharing knowledge, helping each
other
Cooperation – working as instructed but
generally without conflict
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Collaboration today
Competition Compliance Cooperation Collaboration Co-creation
What does collaboration look like?

Not good
end up in boring meetings
it doesn't
people talking
getting different team to interact
with another team
collaboration is mainly
informal/subversive
Working together for a common goal
common goal, at the same time
(synchronization), mutual
dependency
work on google drive
work on my workbook, look at
other's answers when finished
non active discussion
different people work together
delegated, adhoc and enthusiastic
Ritualised around planning &
retrospectives & stand-ups
strong in teams at the coalface but
weak at higher levels
common issues sharing
common goal happy to help culture
accountability
saying hi to people on my team
share information common goals of
the day (I think, very unclear writing)
teamwork
People taking more responsibility,
talks, asking questions, getting
involved
co-location, open discussion
Calling a meeting, reading
confluence articles, reaching out to
people directly or via group emails
People coming together to work on
problem/fire fighting
Acceptance of different ideas,
learning from peers, lunch together
meetings, brainstorming in groups
Fun, accelerated improvement,
happy culture, buzz/noise
Some brainstorming, sharing, new
ideas, active listening, boundaries,
problem to address
working in a team valuing everyone’s
voice and opinions
sometimes with purpose, or without
A group of diverse minds in the same
place working on the same problem
provide solutions/suggestions for
other areas, dedicate part of my
time to help others outcomes
Trust, Understanding, Openness
respect for people
helping not only when it's been
asked for but when I understand it is
needed. ex. if from my experience I
notice that my colleague Analysis
approach will fail then my
collaboration is to share my similar
experience with him/her.
An opportunity to learn and share
knowledge
cross functional teams come
together in a time of crisis to solve
problems
Everyone has a role, Not hierarchy,
Anyone can ask anyone for help
Pairing
Openness - work & status is visible,
Give and take, sharing skills
unselfishly, Common goals &
ownership, Easy access to people
(physical, phone, video)"
Team members having a
conversation on the hour to resolve
issues
high trust, transparency, openness,
empathy, curiosity, directness,
honesty
Competition Compliance Cooperation Collaboration Co-creation
Collaboration maturity by examples

Look at what we
found
I categorized the 110 responses
into 30 categories and counted
how many came up in the better
1,2 3 answers.
What I see is the 3rd level stuff
coming back to basic concepts
but with a higher level of
performance or capability.
I suspect the things on the left are
the areas to focus on if you want
to level up collaboration. We can
investigate this further.
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Better collaboration: Response themes
Better 1 Better 2 Better 3
What does better collaboration look like
for you today?

Look at what we
found
Collaboration doesn’t come free. I asked
you to consider the costs of collaboration at
five different contexts; Personal, team,
company, customers and community.
Here is what you said it costs you to
collaborate;
• Individual: Time and your own personal
energy
• Team: Time and dealing with conflicts
• Organization: Money and time – e.g.
opportunity costs
• Customers: Lack of collaboration costs
them quality and time, presumably
dealing with bad quality
When we asked you about the cost of
collaboration to the community the general
sense was that there was no downside. What is the cost of collaboration for you
today?
25
7
7
5
5
5
44
3
2
2
2
1
4
Time
Energy
Emotional-energy
Vulnerability
Ego
Mental-Energy
Conflict
Empathy
personal goals
control
listening
Knowledge
Goals
None
Cost to Me
18
5
5
4
3
3222
1
1
1
1
1
Time
Conflict
Risk&Waste
Emotional-energy
Empathy
Mental-Energy
Motivation
Vulnerability
Goals
Dependency
Mgt control
Ego
Knowledge
None
Cost to my team
8
6
6
2
3
1
4
Low Quality
Time
Engagement
Higher priceTrust
Privacy
None
Cost to customers
15
12
6
4
33
3
2
1
Money
Time
Market-
opportunity-cost
Staff-
engagement
Mgt-maturityPower-structures
Team-structures
Mgt-Control
Training
Cost to Organisation

Look at what we
found
Shared Purpose
is the number one
opportunity to
improve
collaboration.
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
1
System conditions that encourage collaboration
Shared Purpose
Respect
Co-location
Appreciation
Autonomy
Aligned approach
Making Progress
Nurturing
Feedback
Structure
What are the system conditions that affect
collaboration?

The implications…
• We could do with help mapping out a pathway to better
collaboration
1.We have a shared view on the
value of collaboration in the
abstract;
• Shared mission, alignment in priorities, flow and a culture of
respect and learning
The priority areas we think have
the most impact for good
collaboration are;
• Making time and mustering the mental and emotional
energy to deal with the things that impede better
collaboration
If we want to break beyond our
current levels of performance the
barriers we need to overcome are;

Want more?
Global
Heart of Agile
http://heartofagile.com
Local
Heart of Agile Melbourne meetup
https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/Heart-Of-Agile-Community-Melbourne/
Craig Brown
Blog: BetterProjects.net
Email craigwbrown.net
Twitter @brown_note