When we hear contracts we think about things that are binding.. written signed.. locked…. but there are many other places we need a contract… many of these contracts are never written.. they are just understood and agreed upon my people… they exist because we all need to be able to take care of our responsibilities…

Say you are working in a company and as part of your responsibilities you need to work with a couple other teams… You all are together trying to deliver something.. There are contracts that is never written… to take care of dependencies between teams…. between deliverables…

One of the core values of agile is customer collaboration over contract negotiation.. which just tells that you should spend more time collaborating with your customers or stakeholders rather than negotiating contracts..

But sometimes I feel even collaborations between our working partners needs us to adhere to a working contract in one way or other. How will you address when someone breaks it… these are not contracts that are breached… then what do you do…. ?

In such contracts sometimes people are not able to fulfill their part for a range of reasons… some within their control and some not… My personal take is if we strive towards a transparent working culture.. we can over come this a lot.. We can anticipate contracts falling apart for many reasons.. some we can salvage some not… but in many cases we can prepare and plan for the eventuality and this reduces the stress for a lot of people involved….

Categories: Work & Career

Tags: contract, Teamwork, work and career