Building Your Agile Mindset, Idea #2: Communication

[#1]

G’day, training & certification community! Last week, I let you know about our brand-new free course called Beginner’s Guide to Agile in Jira, designed by excellent human @Andrew DeBell.

Inside that course is a tip sheet listing six concrete ideas to help you build your agile mindset. We want to hear from you with your real-life experiences putting these ideas in action.

This post is the second in a series (find the first over here—and thanks for the early comments!). In each, I’ll share one of the tips, and you can comment on this post below with how you’ve put it into practice in your professional life. Our plan is collect our favorite advice in one post, then share it back with you—and put it on our website, for other folks to learn from.

Also: We’ll be awarding something special to our most engaged users throughout the series! 👀 🥳

Ready to get started with the second tip?

Tip #2 to Build Your Agile Mindset: Communicate openly and clearly

Share updates. Ask questions. Be open and transparent at all times. With each interaction, challenge yourself to communicate clearly and concisely. 

Encourage your team to engage in frequent discussions. Quality discussions can reveal critical information that moves the work forward and helps the team feel more connected.

Seems fundamental, doesn’t it? But sometimes even the basics can use revisiting.

Now, answer these questions by adding a comment below:

1. Can you tell us about a method you use to make sure you’re showing communicating openly and clearly?

2. Where do you have room to improve on clear and open communication?

3. Do you have a trick to jog your memory or help you flex your habit muscle for this particular tip of open communication?

I’ll go first, to get you started with an example.

2. Though I try hard to be clear with my coworkers, I’d say I definitely have some room for improvement on concise communication. One of my favorite tricks is to write any important message—even if it’s just a Slack thread—and then leave it sit for a few hours (ideally, there’s a full night’s rest in between, but sometimes just a walk around the block will work!). When I come back, I can almost always find a slightly less verbose way of expressing myself, that turns into a more efficient use of my coworkers' time and leads to less confusion.

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Enroll today in the free course: Beginner’s Guide to Agile in Jira

Tip #1: All about respect

Read the third post in the series: Tip #3: Look for ways to innovate

Read the fourth post in the series: Tip #4: Actively improve your skills

Read the fifth post in the series: Tip #5: Ditch perfectionism

Read the sixth post in the series: Tip #6: Be ready to PIVOT

[Nikki DuBois]

One thing I wanted to call out is the Beginners Guide stating that Kanban is the "best framework to start with" because it is simple and straightforward. I think this will lead many to believe that they should start with the Kanban framework when ideally that may not be the best fit for their needs. 

I believe this should be reworded and just share the details behind Kanban rather than expressing an opinion.

[Andrew DeBell]

Hi @Nikki DuBois , thanks for this feedback. Very helpful! I completely understand how that would be confusing. I've just added your note to our list of future revisions. We'll make this update on the next round of course maintenance.

[Nikki DuBois]

Another thing I noticed is in the Scrum section. Over Sprint Review you have Daily Stand Up. In the Scrum Guide, this actually is called Daily Scrum. It also does not just happen during the Sprint Review.

The Daily Scrum occurs daily (if the team agrees to daily) and happens during the full duration of a Sprint. Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retro. 

Do you all plan on following the practiced Scrum Guide for these types of things? 

[Nikki DuBois]

Another thing in the Scrum section - you all reference the word "ceremonies" however they are no longer called ceremonies. As I know you are trying to appeal to a larger audience who may be familiar more with the word ceremonies than events -- i personally would stay consistent with the scrum guide but that is just my opinion. It is really hard to navigate folks who were used to the "old way" or "old verbiage" and get them to start using the correct terminology. 

[Nikki DuBois]

Sorry, me again. I would also in the picture of a Scrum Team -- add in a tester or an analyst. Then, it shows that Developer Team is not just comprised of engineers. Just a thought.

[Andrew DeBell]

Thanks for these suggestions @Nikki DuBois . I'm adding them all to our list for future updates. Feel free to keep them coming!

[Jaime Netzer]

Also feel free to share any communication advice/tips/reminders, @Nikki DuBois !! We're glad you're here.

[Nikki DuBois]

I think the training did it's job though - my only suggestion is to keep it consistent with the ScrumGuide. I am so happy you all made this too. I am an Enterprise Coach and I am going through an Agile transformation so having these trainings (aka Jira/COnfluence/Agile fundamentals) makes my life a little bit easier. I am able to share atlassian university with each team as a starting point to begin the process.

Typically the information I teach for Kanban associates with https://kanban.university/

https://kanban.university/resources/

[Sam Nadarajan]

Can you tell us about a method you use to make sure you’re showing communicating openly and clearly?

I've found that the minimum information needed for a communication is to answer the "What, When, Where (if it's a location), and Why". Keep it small and to a few sentences, and it will be easier to remember.

Where do you have room to improve on clear and open communication?

If I took the time to collect data on certain communications that would be helpful. For example, if I track the number of times I received questions about something that I communicated out, and compared that to the number of people receiving the message, then I can score how effective the communication was. If 3 people asked me questions that had been covered in a message sent out to 10 people, then I could say my message was 70% effective. I can compare trends over time and use numbers to help me make a data driven decision.

Do you have a trick to jog your memory or help you flex your habit muscle for this particular tip of open communication?

I'll talk to someone I trust on the team and bounce the announcement off of them. Then I'll ask them to tell me what I just told them. What they remember about the event is what I must include in the final messaging. What they don't remember is what I'll need to optimize. Never underestimate the ability of team members to help you help them.

[Vijay Venkataramani]

Participating in Community is in itself a way to volunteering in transparent  "Communi"cation.  You can clearly see both the words have Communi  is "Common" in it co-incidentally. Basically I communicate to everyone through communities freely because it gives me the liberty to be transparent.

So openly communicating brings value to not only one person but to the entire community.  

[Andy Gladstone]

Can you tell us about a method you use to make sure you’re showing communicating openly and clearly?

This one really resonates with me. I try to reserve emails for important announcements or work that MUST be documented. This way my team and organization does not look at emails from me as too frequent or spammy. Slack is where quick messaging happens - which takes the need for formality out of the equation. When Slacking, I prefer to use channels over DM's unless the communication must be 1:1. This allows others that may not NEED to know the information this moment access to it at a later date. I found that with email the more people on CC (or BCC) the less accountable each person feels, but with Slack it's the opposite effect - more exposure = more engagement.