Building Trust from Quality Interactions

Esther Derby had occasion to read my first blog entry (Im honored!). She had some GREAT trust-building tips to share in her blog entry "Quality results come from quality interactions". She gave five pragmatic ways to help build trust, and described each one in detail.

1. Build a Foundation
2. Focus on Interests rather than positions
3. Seek Solutions Together
4. Communicate Face-to-Face whenever possible
5. Make a Generous Interpretation

Visit Esther's blog to read about each one of them. My own quick mental notes are ...

• #2 Looks similar to material in the books Getting to Yes and Getting Past No (also see great books in the same series on Crucial Conversations and it's sequel Crucial Confrontations)
• #3 reminds me of the phrase "roll-up your sleeves and join hands instead of pointing fingers and shaking fists"
• #5 is the also prominent in David Schmaltz' book The Blind Men and the Elephant
• Together, #3-5 also remind us to prefer dialogue over debate (and some good books on tranforming debate into dialogue by authors like Deborah Flick, Deborah Tannen, Thomas Crum, and Daniel Yankelovich).

So what does this have to do with configuration management? EVERYTHING! Many would say CM is all about product integrity and congruence (say/do) - both of which are crucial components of trust. I would also suggest that the relationship between CMers and developers is often one of animosity and distrust (ye olde "throw it over the wall" from development to CM often leads to "great walls of ire" :-).

Development needs to build trust with CM, just like its other stakeholders. And CM needs to do the same with development. How might CMers and developers come to the table to do items 1-5 above? How might you do that if ...

• You're a "hardcore" CMer and youre accustomed to traditional waterfall or V-model development and some cowbow-coding hackers who call themselves "agile" want to build a relationship of trust with you?
• You're a "bona fide" agilist, and you need to build trust with some "stodgy old", waterfall-laden, document-driven, process-heavy CM/build meisters?
  

Any ideas?