I. What is the Prime Directive?

You may be thinking of Star Trek’s Prime Directive to not interfere with alien civilizations. Which is not what this is about. Although you probably shouldn’t interfere with alien civilizations, either. Instead, this is about creating a positive culture. In this context, the prime directive is about giving people the benefit of the doubt. They guys at Manager Tools refer to it as “assume positive intent” and cover it well in a podcast on their site.

In James Shore's book on The Art of Agile Development he discusses the use of something he calls "the prime directive" that he recommends to read at the beginning of any retrospective. The prime directive goes something like this - "Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand." The most effective teams I've lead have believed the prime directive. They acted in the spirit that this was true. They gave one another the benefit of the doubt.

Nobody knows the depths of you. You're complicated. Everyone is. There are an infinite number of possible reasons why someone acted a certain way. Our natural tendency is to attribute the reason we would have acted that way. "I wouldn't arrive late unless I was didn't respect that person" when it could be "I arrived late because my daughter is very sick." Giving the person the benefit of the doubt is the way to always take the high road. And it doesn't cost anything. Don't you want to be treated that way?

So let's say it before we start our retrospectives.

II. How do you do it?

The retrospective meeting is one of the most important ceremonies in agile development. It creates a system of continuous improvement. It provides much needed feedback into the system that you rely on to deliver working software. At the beginning of each retrospective, have one person (generally not the same person) read the prime directive out loud. That person then asks each and every person in the retrospective to agree out loud by saying "I agree". It's that simple.

It may seem crazy. Read the prime directive out loud? Require people to agree out loud. Yes, it's that important. It's worth every moment of having to have a conversation with a bunch of adults who might find it a little childish. Because really, it forces the issue that you mean it. It creates a ground rule for the meeting, and the ground rule will spill over into the other day-to-day interactions of the team.

How do you introduce it? Start with yourself. Tell your team you believe it's important. That you want to act this way, that you believe everyone does. That you want to be a part of the team that gives one another the benefit of the doubt. And that you'd like to read it and ask everyone to agree as a ground rule for retrospectives. You might have team members that thinks it's silly. Or unnecessary. In reality you won't have people say that don't agree. Anyone that has trouble saying "I agree" to the prime directive has larger issues that must be addressed individually. And the time it takes for your team to each say "I agree" is incredibly short.

III. Why do it in the retrospective?

A retrospective is a safe place. Ideally an entire scrum team is a safe place. The retrospective is where a dysfunctional team can really get out the knives. We need a retrospective to provide feedback to the system. And we need folks on the team to feel like they can say "we need to do more of this" or "less of that" without either stabbing someone in the back or feeling stabbed.

You're looking for the entire group to brainstorm on ideas to change. And you're looking for each member of the team to own one or two things that can be tried. It won't work if some of those people on the team feel undermined. Or not trusted. It will devolve. It sets the standard for how change ideas will be surfaced and vocalized. Your team will think harder before they say something the implies negativity to someone else. There will be more "we statements" like "we need to user accept more stories earlier on in the iteration."

When you set the standard that you're willing to say out loud that everyone gets the benefit of the doubt, you're making it that important. What else is so important that you make a point of saying before every meeting? Ground rules. And ground rules create the ability for no one person to have to be the enforcer. It sets the a standard that anyone can refer to; the ground rules become the enforcer.

IV. What happens?

You will subtly see changes in the language of your team. Your team will say "we". Your retrospectives will be more constructive. When someone does wander into a finger pointing moment, you can simply say "remember the prime directive." Anyone can say it. It becomes a core value of your team. It fits with kindness and the golden rule - treat other people how you want to be treated. It’s a ground rule.

Your team will start to ask how they can help one another. They may ask "do you need something to be sure you can do that?" It will help focus the stand-up meetings; where you're surfacing roadblocks. When someone acts out of the prime directive, it means that I'm the hook for helping get that person better information or improving their skills. Because we’re in it together. And we're going to get the best we can get from that person within those constraints.