Communication is the Key to Agile

Gigantic enterprise projects require thousands of developers and countless hours of work.  I am working on one of these projects, and I have learned a few things along the way.  Today, I want to discuss the importance of communication if you are going to be a successful agilist. 

When working with extensive enterprise applications, you should understand that no one will know how the system works.  A person will understand how a particular portion works but not how the entire system operates. Today's giant software applications for business are so big and complex that it is impossible to comprehensively understand how information flows through the system.  Confronted with this reality requires numerous people's collaboration to outline how a system operates.  

The collection of experts in a room will hash out how the system operates.  Once they have a general idea, they start creating user stories to flesh out that operation and assign work to different teams.   With software teams scattered around the world in different time zones, questions are bound to come up.  Product owners and scrum masters then attempt to bridge the gap between the various teams to get the work done.  It is a tedious and painstaking process. 

I use a technique I learned in my undergraduate days as a speech and debate person.  I tell people what I am going to say to them.  I tell them and finally tell them what I just told them.  These techniques sound redundant, which is the point of the entire exercise because repetition aids in the retention of information.  

For instance, we are adding extra fields to an API, so I call a meeting to discuss it with the vendor and the team consuming the vendor's API.  I send out a meeting notice with a brief plan.  During the conference, I said, "We will cover the new fields in the API and how they are going to be consumed."  The next portion of this meeting talks about the fields and how the team will consume them.  At the end of the session, I review what we talked about and, if necessary, follow up with an e-mail and some user stories the teams need to finish.  

Notice the goal of the meeting is clear and stated up-front with a clear purpose.  We work toward that goal.  Finally, we restate how we are going to achieve that goal.  It helps to leverage the communications systems used in the office, including e-mail, instant messaging, and project management tools.  It is a way to hold people accountable and make sure they understand. 

Checking for understanding is essential.  It is one thing to say something, but understanding is a different skill.  It is why you should ask others to repeat back what they know.  When there is a disconnect, you can clarify the misunderstanding.  For a busy person, communication like this can be exhausting, but checking for understanding will improve the quality of work on the team.  The time spent talking now is going to save time doing rework later. 

On gigantic projects, it pays to over-communicate.  Tell people what you are going to tell them.  Tell them, and then tell them what you just told them.  You can thank me later when the level of misunderstanding decreases and quality improves.  

Until next time.