Agile communication: Communication conspiracy

Over 11 years of commercial experiences in IT, beginning as a software designer/engineer and moving up into project management, program management, and into executive management at a company provides SW services for international customers (USA, Germany, Austria, Great Britain, …) that operating in mission critical and life critical sectors – i.e. air traffic control management systems, extensive healthcare applications, and public safety systems. Started with agile and Scrum back in 2005, where I was involved in implementing the agile methods at large US company operating in the medical area. From that time, I was responsible for implementation of agile and Scrum to teams in the Czech Republic operating in different areas of IT industry. Everybody agrees these days that communication is one of the key success factors in any project, regardless of their size and complexity. During the agile adoption process, many teams and managers are blind to communication issues and believe everything is working just fine. However, experience suggests that communication is failing at many levels -managers don't really understand their developers, testers and other geeks, who on the other hand often fail to effectively sell their point back to management. Similar situations exist between sales and technical experts or even between developers and testers. The fact is that speaking the same language doesn't guarantee the understanding of each other's points. This highly-interactive talk shows typical communication patterns, behaviors and provides eye-opening insights into the ways communication can improved Some practical games include the whole audience, which typically makes the session very lively and engaging. Learning outcomes - Communication is important - in agile more than at any other methodology ever. We communicate on daily basis with our colleagues in the team, with management, with customer and we should be efficient in that. - We are often playing communication games, and using communication patterns. Choose how will you response to those patterns, choose your attitude, it’s just about your head.