The first thing to build is TRUST!

I suppose it's fitting that this is my first blog entry, and it's all about what should be the first thing to build in any kind of relationship. I only hope I can live up to it. I guess time will tell!
Recently, Alistair Cockburn's email signature has been sporting a quotation attributed to me:

The first thing to build is trust! --Brad Appleton

I was both incredibly surprised and incredibly honored to see one of the giants and founding fathers of the agile software development movement citing my own words. I had to go back and reread what I wrote that was so "quotation worthy." It was actually a bit harder than I thought, I had to dig around through the archives of several agile-related mailing lists. Then I found it!

In an Aug 16, 2004 post to the extremeprogramming yahoo group, Julian Boot wrote:

This is one thing I pay important attention to when introducing XP. There is tremendous value in getting the first iteration to deliver some value to the customer. Nothing removes the skepticism better. And nothing shows just how much control the customer has when a recommendation they made in a conversation two days ago is now implemented and passes the given tests.

I responded with the following reply:

Excellent point! We often say that each iteration should build something useful, starting with the most important thing.

Maybe the most important and useful thing that the initial iteration needs to build is ... trust!?

Then a few months later in the same forum on November 22, 2004, I read:

Once a good working relationship has been established and the project gets into "steady state", then risk-hedging or EV [earned value] prioritization certainly becomes a reasonable option.

Well that clinched it! I'd seen this same sort of comment enough times before - it was time to start a new slogan. I replied with this message:

That's starting to support a slogan I've been thinking about proposing. In Agile software development, what is the first and most important "thing" that we "build"?

• Some would say executable (and working) software;
• Some might say, "the code";
• Non-agile methods might say "specs".

I'm starting to wonder if maybe it isn't any of those things. Maybe the first and most important thing that an agile development project "builds" is TRUST!

• We do it with intense collaboration (including with the customer, and also with other stakeholders across the lifecycle)
• We do it with short iterations and feedback-loops
• We don't require anywhere near as much documentation or specification or traceability ...

because we built trust into the process very early on!

We gave the customer control, made our process and progress visible and transparent, and we listen and learn. And we get better at it, and give better results by continuing to build and earn TRUST.

Then, just a few days later on Nov 24, Alistair posted a note to the crystalclear yahoo group about "team building" asking for some stories. I posted a rather lengthy reply with some teambuilding stories of my own, and some of my preferred books on leading/facilitating group decisions and resolving conflicts. Now I suppose I have to live up to that! Somewhere in my musings of seemingly spuriously related, often diametrically opposed subjects of software configuration management, software architecture, and agility, I'm asking readers who are interested in perhaps at best one of these three subjects to TRUST me, and be willing to read more about the other two:

• I'll be asking SCM folks to learn about object-oriented design principles and patterns and refactoring
• And I'll be asking software designers and agilists to learn about software configuration management

And then I'll be asking all of them to beleive it's all interconnected and that the result is a 4+2 views model of architecture encompassing design of:

• change management
• project management
• build & release management
• development & deployment environment
• process management
• organizational structure

And I'll be suggesting we roll it all up into one big service-oriented enterprise-architecture solution! Yesiree indeed - that is one mighty tall order!