Why is Trust Important for Empiricism?

Teams that work in an empirical way are continually taking risks, creating innovative ideas and providing feedback.  Without having trust on the team, members may become reluctant to take those risks or offer their alternative ideas. Without trust, team members may act in ways that will avoid critique. In particular, they may feel a need to spend a lot of time analyzing or planning, rather than feeling free to experiment.

When teams experiment, they make and test hypotheses. If the experiment “fails,” it’s not a failure of the team or the person that proposed it, it’s simply that the hypothesis was not supported. The experiment itself was a great success, because the team learned something valuable and is further down the path of solving their problem. Understanding this aspect of experimentation and feeling supported when the experiment “fails” is an important leadership mindset shift when adopting Scrum.