Introduction
Communication is important within all project management approaches but is especially important for the agile approach. This is because interaction and sharing of information are a key part of agile. Members must work closely with not only each other, but also stakeholders to meet requirements and goals. The agile principle addresses the importance of communication including:
“Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”
Agile communication prioritizes close collaboration and interaction with team members and stakeholders
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”
Agile communication does not focus on detailed documentation, but instead focuses on face-to-face communication as things move and change quickly.
“Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.”
Agile communication intends to simplify and reduce the steps for teams to get information across to team members.
In this article we will address planning, managing, and monitoring communication from an agile approach.
Planning
Traditional communication planning focuses on well outlined communication strategies and structures. This means there is a detailed and written plan with regular documentation and reports following a calendar. This however does not fit well to the agile approach. As agile is focused on simplicity and flexibility it is difficult for teams to follow a dedicated calendar. Teams also do not necessarily know where a project will be and what needs to be communicated on a given day. This also means that detailed documentation is counterproductive to the goals of agile. Though this may seem like communication plans should not be used in agile there are still effective ways to implement them and enhance the project performance.
Firstly, agile does not just get rid of documentation in total as this would hinder the project and possibly future projects to follow it. Instead, agile should cut down on emails and documentation by using face-to-face meetings. Some agile meetings for project managers to plan could be start planning, scrum meeting, sprint review, and retrospective. A meeting for starting to planning is used for team members to get together and plan their sprint with deliverables, delegation, and plan of action. Scrum meetings can be something done daily, weekly, or at any other interval that project managers decide. This meeting is typically a standing meeting where each team member addresses what they completed since the last meeting, what they are working on now, and any issues they are facing. Sprint reviews are where team members and stakeholders gather to demo what they completed in the previous sprint. Lastly, retrospective is used to go over what went well in the sprint, what didn’t, and how to improve going forward. In all these meetings documentations is cutdown, but not eliminated as teams should take notes of what happened in meetings and action items to reference later and of the creation and updates to acceptance criteria as the project progresses. Another thing to plan as a manager is how to communicate progress, it is often done through online project management tools to make progress visible to all team members.
Example from Taiga.io
Managing
Managing project communications is making sure that information gets to the right people at the right time. With traditional managing of communications it can be difficult for project managers because there are less face-to-face meetings and managers must make sure that documents and communication is happening through email, chats, or other forms of communication when necessary. Instead, with agile communication management is particularly easier as face-to-face meetings are very common and team members will discuss what information, documents, and other things they need to move forward with the project. Though it is also important for teams to make use of documentation to take notes in meetings of things discussed, action items to work on, and keep track of updated acceptance criteria. Daily scrum meetings can be useful for team members to discuss what they have completed, what they are currently working on, and what they need to progress from other members. This can also be supplemented by online project management tools to show what work each member is working on too.
Monitoring
With traditional project communications monitoring is used to make sure optimal flow of information is happening throughout the project life cycle. In agile there is a lot more of interaction in person by team members with the quick meeting style that is planned. This means that monitoring the flow of information can be a lot easier for managers. One thing about monitoring that agile project managers must still take into consideration is if any problems or disconnects on communication is happening between the team. This must be addressed by managers and team members immediately as communication is vital in the success of projects, especially in the agile methodology.
If there are problems in team communications some suggestions for improvement are:
Developing Better Communication Skills
Offering sessions for team members to improve communication skills can be effective in helping team communication
Run Effective Meetings
Make sure that meetings are meeting the purpose and intended outcomes of the meeting
Use Collaborative Tools Effectively
Communication methods such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, email, and more can be beneficial for teams to communicate and should be monitored by the project manager
Online agile project management tools can be a huge benefit to team communication if implemented in an effective manner.
Example from Microsoft Teams
Conclusion
Traditional project communication management is focused on documentation with clearly outlined strategies and structures for teams to be able to communicate on a set schedule. Agile however is meant to be more flexible and is prone to changes which makes this approach to communication management cumbersome and in some ways counterproductive to the project. Instead, agile communication management focuses on short face-to-face meetings that reduce the need for emails and documentation of the process. Agile project managers should instead plan for what meetings the team will hold including planning meetings, scrum meetings, reviews, and retrospectives for teams to effectively communicate about the project and share information with the team. This means that the process of managing and monitoring communications is reduced for project managers in the agile approach. As team members will have face-to-face communication with each other it will allow for the flow of information to the necessary members happens typically within those meetings. This all shows how communication in agile differs from traditional and how project managers should work to plan, manage, and monitor that communication.
Resources:
How to nail your agile communication plan. Lucidchart. (2021, February 24). Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/how-to-nail-your-agile-communication-plan.
Schwalbe, K. (2019). Information technology project management (9th ed.). Cengage.
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