Topic

How to ensure Face to Face communication becomes the preferred choice of communication - an Agile Principle

Response

The principle is:

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information is by FACE TO FACE COMMUNICATION.

Face to face communication is promoted throughout an agile organisation since it has proven to address a number of issues commonly found in traditional life cycle projects. The focus is to adopt face to face communication throughout the entire life cycle of an agile led project where possible, rather than hold formal meetings or solicit feedback from colleagues and others through digital means, for example attaching documentation.

Whether you’re participating in a planning session, providing an update during a daily stand-up or sharing your experience during a retrospective, face to face communication helps the entire team quickly focus on what is important, quickly raise questions or challenge wha is being communicates without the need for relying heavily of written documentation.

By extending these benefits into stakeholder reviews and situations where accurate and timely feedback is needed, the agile team and the wider organisation will realise other benefits from face to face communication in such ways as demonstrates clearly engagement, motivation and understanding. Face to face back is spontaneous and value can be extracted from all the nonverbal communication such as gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, which are otherwise hidden with digital communication methods.

Whether the Agile Team has chosen to communicate on a daily basis in the physical or digital world, they must remember to create an array of artefacts. From a Feature Roadmap to an individual sprint, or kanban board., accompanied by additional material such as personas, use cases and other visual materials, which ensures individual user stories can be evaluated in context. This comprehensive presentation of material reduces reliance in complex documentation and analytical activities.

Finally, encouraging face to face communication dramatically reduces the amount to time preparing written material, which either results in long review and approval cycles, possible interpretation issues or simply documenting requirements that will eventually be changed or not required at all.

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