Collaboration and Communication in Agile Tech Teams
Successful Agile teams work well together and pivot alongside their product needs. To do this effectively, communication between and within teams must be prioritised. Effective communication starts with a communication plan, which you should create during your Agile sprint planning meeting.
A proper communication plan is critical for ensuring everyone is on the same page, especially when project details are prone to change.
Creating a Communication Plan
Identify the teams and people that need to be involved in the plan. Some teams find it useful to visualise every team member on a whiteboard or digital alternative. This makes it easier to define communication routes.
Your project objectives should already align with business goals, so your communication plan needs to emulate these too.
As you did with team members, list the communication channels you will use throughout the project.
Next, outline the roles of every team or team member and the responsibilities attached to each. You can then map each role to a channel, so everyone knows how they are expected to communicate.
Only a few members of your project team will be making decisions, so these people need to be clearly defined. Break this section down according to potential decisions, how they will be made and who has sign-off authority.
Your communication plan needs to incorporate external feedback, as well as internal retrospectives and team meetings. Customer surveys and focus groups are another source of feedback that should be included in your communication plan.
领英推荐
Pre-empting change is a critical step in creating your communication plan. Outline how this will be dealt with to avoid resistance and maintain productivity. This is also a good time to address conflict resolution.
Document every meeting and process that is defined throughout the project. Then, review each of these to learn how to improve in the next sprint. Agile projects thrive on data-driven decisions, so collect as many insights as you can.
Tools and Team Building
In large organisations, internal teams within project teams may not know each other. Team building is a great way to ensure effective collaboration across the business. Team building that doesn’t involve alcohol is ideal for inclusivity, but many people like to enjoy a couple after the main events.
Team building ideas
Communicating Remotely
Communication tools make collaborating across different locations easy. Project management tools include digital Kanban boards, content planners, code hosting and other collaboration enablers.
For more information on remote working tools, check out this roundup of the best Agile tools for project management.
Coex: Your Guide to Agile Communication
Coex makes Agile communication easy by defining it between stakeholders. With every process clearly defined, your teams can confidently get on with their tasks for that sprint, knowing other team members are doing so too.
For more information on who we are and how we help organisations achieve Agile success, head over to our About page. We’ve outlined our process for full transparency, but feel free to get in touch for a more personalised explanation of how we can help you.