Scrum: Communication is Everything

Why do projects fail?

Perhaps a better question is how many stars are in the sky? Projects can seemingly fail for endless reasons. Let's list a few broad examples for the sake of discussion.

• Requirements did not match User expectations
• Development Team did not understand Requirements
• Development Team did not communicate technical limitations to Product Owner
• Product Owner did not communicate important goals to Development Team
• Management did not understand project Scope and team was understaffed.
• Conflicting Requirements were issued to Development Team bypassing process.

I feel like I've barely scratched the surface... and yet, there is a significant commonality across these failure modes: a failure to communicate.

So how does this relate to Scrum?

"Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value."

OK but how? How do we address "complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value?" Simply put, Scrum works by framing and facilitating communication.

Scrum is a framework designed to facilitate communication.

I don't think that's something that's plainly said or understood or *cough* communicated nearly enough.

Every single aspect of the Scrum framework, every ceremony, every artifact, every role is purposefully designed to facilitate clear communication; communication of progress, communication of responsibility, communication of requirements and stakeholder feedback. Scrum does not deliver business value, it organizes how we communicate about the delivery of business value.

If Scrum is how we communicate with one another, then every problem a Scrum Team might encounter with their process inevitably boils down to a single issue: communication.

A Scrum Master uses the Scrum Framework as a tool to shape and facilitate communication with their team, the business and the stakeholders.

The function of the Product Owner role is to communicate business requirements and feature priorities to the Development Team.

The Development Team communicates their progress and delivery of value in the Sprint Review ceremony. The Development team is meant to be co-located to facilitate high-bandwidth intra-team communication.

Backlog grooming is about refining the teams understanding of requirements and requesting additional clarity in these communications where necessary.

Communication is everything.

Communication is a very hard problem to solve which is why we need frameworks like Scrum and why the Scrum Master role brings value. It's nearly impossible to have perfect communication where every idea is understood with perfect clarity and total contextual awareness.

I chose to write this article about Scrum communication because the Scrum Guide only uses the word "communicate" or "communications" once in the entire document and I think that's an oversight... or failure to communicate properly what Scrum is really all about.

On the other hand, it uses the word "understand" or "understanding" 19 times. But how do we get to understanding without first communicating?

Communication is everything.

As a Scrum Master, I need to facilitate communication with my Scrum Team so that we can succeed in creatively delivering products of the highest value.