Agile Communication Strategies, Finding What Works Best

Communication is key to having a working scrum team when using agile methodology. Teams that are able to communicate often and efficiently, are able to accomplish more for their project, collect feedback, and better develop their software. A case study on communication in agile development stated, "Effective communication and feedback are crucial in agile development. Extreme programming embraces both communication and feedback as interdependent process values which are essential for projects to achieve successful results."(Mikko, Pekka, & Pekka, 2006) Feedback is essential to ensure that a scrum team is developing their project to be able to fit the needs of the product owner and that the product owner knows the team's perspective on the project development. To collect feedback a scrum team must be in always be in communication with all other members of the team, the scrum master, the product owner, and any others needed in the development process from end users to developers outside of the team.

(http://www.romanpichler.com/, 2015)

Analysis of modes of communication in agile practices found, "active communication in communication hierarchy plays a vital role in improving design and quality of software. It reduces the project development time and cost of change of software."(Bhalerao and Ingle, 2011) Active communication and feedback will help the scrum team to move forward faster and more efficiently with the project by keeping them updated what needs to be done, what is done right, and what needs to be worked on.

First hand I have seen how necessary communication is for developing software using agile strategies. In the Project that I am currently working on, The Santa Clara Valley Wine Association Application(SCVWAA), I'm working with a scrum team with five other team members and as a team we must communicate daily using several types of communication. To ensure we are effectively communicating and giving each other feedback, my scrum team stays in contact by meeting in person multiple times a week, emailing, texting using mobile devices, group chats, and video conferencing with WebEx software. By using several forms of communication, whenever a member of the scrum team needs to talk with the team, they can communicate anywhere they are on multiple platforms. As team manager of the SCVWAA project, it is essential that I keep in contact with the product owner to understand what he wants out of the project, keep the the product owner informed on what has been finished for the project by the my team, what is still being worked on, and what will not work or is not working. Without proper communication my team would not be able to effectively work on our project or develop what is wanted from our product owner.

To ensure the best communication, a scrum team must find the best way to communicate within the team, as well as with the scrum leader and product owner. Having multiple ways to communicate helps to ensure that team members can reach others with ease, but using too many modes of communication can end up being confusing and hard to keep track of. Try to keep your communication modes to what is necessary, try to use platforms like google, that allow for multiple modes of communication from one company. Overall to have a successful project, keep up with constant communication within scrum team, with the product owner, and scrum master.

(google.com, 2015)