Agility and Effective Communication
Agile coach and trainer Mishkin Berteig recently wrote a blog article called “The Seven Core Practices of Agile Work” where he highlighted the importance of effective (”powerful”) communication. I agree. In my experience, effective communication is often the most important factor in project success. However, my views about the nature of effective communication are different. Berteig wrote:
To Communicate Powerfully, a team needs to prefer in-person communication over distributed communication. Synchronous over asynchronous communication. High-bandwidth over low-bandwidth communication. Multi-mode communication over single-mode communication. — Mishkin Berteig
These suggestions sound agile on the surface, but it could also be just a different variation of the “process over individuals” perspective. For example, the suggestions doesn’t consider the vastly different ways that various groups of individuals interact. Why not just prefer “effective communication” for a specific team and context without requiring a priori preferences about how that communication will be implemented? In my experience, a combination of communication styles and strategies including a mix of both face-to-face, synchronous communication and distributed, asynchronous communication have generally been the most effective. I believe it’s a false dichotomy, but if a team must choose between one extreme of always having distributed, asynchronous communication or always communicating face-to-face, then I would prefer the latter. I also believe it would probably not be the most effective way to communicate compared to a combination of the two styles, where the balance is tailored to a specific team’s personality, preferences, and other contextual aspects. Of course, in some contexts the balance might be close to one extreme or the other.
It may appear to be more difficult to discover the proper combination of communication styles than to accept predefined communication preferences. However, I’m confident that if a team wants effective communication and they use techniques like retrospectives to fine tune their behavior based on experience, they will succeed in finding what works best for them and become increasingly skilled at adjusting those approaches as project context changes. This feedback and adaptation is a key aspect of agile team behavior.
Mishkin Berteig wrote:
Steve,
This is an excellent point and it is one of the reasons that whenever I do training or coaching, I emphasize that all of this “agile” stuff rests on some basic assumptions and disciplines that must guide everything else. Just because I’ve listed these things as core practices, doesn’t mean that every agile team in every circumstance uses them exactly the same (whatever that means).
Far from it. Everyone on the team needs to remember what I call the Agile Axioms:
We are Creators
Reality is Percieved
Change is Natural
And everyone should be aspiring to perfect these disciplines:
Empower the Team
Amplify Learning
Eliminate Waste
All the practices, processes, tools, etc. are just results of these axioms and disciplines. How the practices are used in a specific circumstance must take these into account.
This is true about modes of communication. The point is: Communicate Powerfully. All those dichotomous examples of communication modes are simply to demonstrate that the team should “prefer” them, not use them exclusively or robotically. The human adaptable element must be there too.
Posted 11 Sep 2006 at 8:11 pm ¶
Steve Bate wrote:
Hello Mishkin,
It’s clear we’re more in agreement than disagreement here, but I think there are still some minor differences in our perspectives. I don’t believe that a team should prefer one mode of communication over another, independent of context. A typical team uses several or many different modes of communication for different purposes and with different groups of individuals. Face-to-face collocated communication is just one mode of communication and it’s not always the most effective one. What if we minimized assumptions, axioms and preferences (I know they can never be eliminated), amplify learning as you suggest, and increased awareness of context so we could discover the most effective tools to achieve our goals in a given situation. I believe this could lead to more empowerment by providing informed choices to the team and can eliminate waste through increased awareness of context, goals and results. Again, I think our views are very close on this topic.
Regards,
Steve
Posted 11 Sep 2006 at 9:01 pm ¶