Project Planning

Communicationsmanagementinscrumprojects.pdf

Home >Business & Finance homework help >Management homework help >Project Planning

Communications Management in Scrum Projects

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel Faculty of Management of Technology, Holon institute of Technology ‐ HIT, Holon, Israel [email protected] [email protected] Abstract: The last decade is characterized, in many IT companies, by changing the system development life cycle methodology from the classical waterfall or prototype methods to the agile methodology of development. The agile methodology, developed in the beginning of 2000's, encourages the development of working software within a defined framework, while accepting changes and keeping the customer involved during the whole project. The present paper examines the relationship between the project management‐customer's communication and the project success. The agile software development methodology was introduced in February 2001, when the Agile Manifesto was conceived, based on four values: (1) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; (2) Working software over comprehensive documentation; (3) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and (4) Responding to change over following a plan. The scrum model for developing software applies the agile values and methodology while presenting a framework, terminology, roles and ceremonies to perform successful projects. The core roles include the development team, the scrum master, and the product owner who represents the customer and the users. Effective communication with the various stakeholders in a scrum project, aimed to develop a new product or software, is essential. The scrum method defines a series of sprints, of two to four weeks, in which the team performs the tasks to be completed. The current paper presents a quantitative research, where 61 managers and customers of IT scrum projects, answered a reliable questionnaire. The study investigated the perceived success of agile projects as measured by meeting schedule, budget and performance requirements, as well as customer satisfaction and long term achievements such as business objectives and development of core competencies. Findings reveal that effective communication is a dominant factor in a success scrum project. Furthermore, the communications with the customer was characterized by the following items: face‐to‐face conversations, telephone and email correspondences, and accepting changes following conversations with the customer. Analysis of the virtual communication tools effectiveness shows that although the project team members are satisfied with the use of these communication media tools, the tools are usually not evaluated on an economical basis but rather based on a convenience of use. The study highlights the importance of communications management in IT project management as applied these days. Professionals and project managers should be aware to the impact of effective communications on the project success and to be able to identify the weak areas in their arena of communications. Keywords: communications management; agile; scrum; project management; project success

1. Introduction Information Technology (IT) companies tend to change the methodology of developing new products, from the well‐established and known waterfall methodology, which was introduced in the 1970's by Winston Royce (1970), to a dynamic approach that fits to the short, intensive product life cycle of the 21st century. In 2001 the agile software development approach was form, based on the understanding that the current software and information technology industry is energetic and changing as opposed to the solid known industry of construction and engineering. The agile approach is focused on developing, within a defined short timeframe, a quality product that is aligned with the changing requirements, while considering the customer's needs and preferences and maintaining effective and open communication with the customer. The methodology is based on four values: (1) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; (2) Working software over comprehensive documentation; (3) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and (4) Responding to change over following a plan. Communications management is a core concept in agile because it is required to communicate with the customer and with the project team throughout the project in order to achieve the best product, therefore to achieve project success. Several studies examined waterfall vs. agile project management over the years. They report that waterfall teams invested more time in documentation while agile teams coded and documented design. They also found that short duration projects with small development teams achieve similar results although worked with different methodologies. However, all these studies support the identification of communications and coordination as a key success factor in software development projects (Feng & Sedano, 2011; Tsun & Dac‐Buu, 2008; Andersen et al., 2006).

mailto:[email protected]

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel

The current study aims to explore the relationship between the project management‐customer's communication and the project success. It is focused on investigating IT projects, developing software based on the agile methodology. We investigated the perceived success of agile projects as measured by meeting schedule, budget and performance requirements, as well as customer satisfaction and long term achievements such as business objectives and development of core competencies. The research independent variable is a composed variable which represents the perceived communications. The following part reviews the communication processes in general and its implementation in agile projects in particular. The next part describes the study method, including the sample and the questionnaire which was used to collect data. Then, the research findings are presented and the paper is concludes with recommendations and directions for future research.

2. Project communications management "Communication" is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium . . . means of sending or receiving information, such as telephone lines or computers. . ." The communication is an interpersonal process that enables the transmission of messages, ideas, and meanings between persons. In the 1940s the communication researcher, Harold Laswell, presented a basic model which divides the communication process into five major components: the sender, the message, the channel, the receiver, and the outcome of the process. The basic model, based on the mechanistic approach, emphasized the technical aspect of the communication process. The model’s foremost shortcoming was that it represented a one‐direction transfer of information, and neglected the two‐direction, circular, characteristic of communication process. In 1949, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver presented an advanced communication model, based on the model presented by Laswell (Shannon & Weaver, 1963). The new model introduced feedback as an additional important component of communication, which enriched the basic model by converting it to two‐direction, circular, process presentation. This communication model is presented in the following exhibit.

Sender ReceiverEncoding Decoding Message

Channel

Feedback Noise . . .

Figure 1: Basic communication model

The elements presented in the model include: sender/receiver, message, channel, encoding/decoding, feedback, and noise (Gibson et al., 1991). The Sender refers to the individual who initiate the communication process. The Receiver typically refers to the individual who accept the message and acts as the message’s destination. The sender and the receiver may change their roles during the communication process. Message typically refers to the verbal and nonverbal signals that conveyed by each communicator in the communication process. Channel is the vehicle or the medium by which the message is transferred. Encoding is the procedure of encryption of the message into common symbols and signs. Decoding refer to the procedure of interpretation of symbols and signs while giving them meaning. Feedback creates a two‐directional, circular, process in which the receiver approves he received the message and ensure he assign it the right meaning. And the Noise refers to any barrier that may interrupt the message exchange process and cause to a communication failure. Hartley (2001) elaborates on interpersonal communication where face‐to‐face communication between two people is not mediated by any medium or channel; it includes only a small number of participants who are physically close to each other, which enable them to maintain eye contact and immediate response. In this type of communication both parties can express themselves actively and they can provide verbal and nonverbal feedback. Interpersonal communication is considered to be a "rich" communication channel to transfer the message as it facilitates understanding by receiving an immediate and multi‐layers feedback that improves software team work. Huang, Kahai, & Jestice (2010) investigated decision‐making in virtual teams

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel

and found that leadership depends on media richness, where richer communication takes less time and improves trust among the project team members. These findings are supported by another study, by Purdy, Nye & Balakrishnan (2000) who compared four communication channels for negotiation and found that media richness affects required bargaining time, outcome satisfaction and the desire for future negotiation interaction. Therefore, interpersonal communication is preferred to other communication channels such as written documents, videoconferences, telephone conversations, and computer‐mediated communications (& Daft & Langel, 1988; Downs & Adrian, 2004).

3. Agile project communications The main processes in any development project are concept and requirements analysis, architecture design, detailed design, coding, debugging, testing, installation, and maintenance. The traditional waterfall model is based on sequential progress where the beginning of one stage depends on the completion of previous stage and on the documentation that was produced during the former stage. However, this long‐established approach was found, at least in several cases, insufficient for the dynamic technological environment. Therefore, in 2001, the agile methodology was developed by a group of software projects professionals (Rossberg, 2008; Sliger & Broderick, 2008). The four basic values of the software agile approach are: (1) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; (2) Working software over comprehensive documentation; (3) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and (4) Responding to change over following a plan. The agile manifesto was published in 2001 to define the guidelines and principles, as presented in the following exhibit.

1. Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software 2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development 3. Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months) 4. Working software is the principal measure of progress 5. Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace 6. Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers 7. Face‐to‐face conversation is the best form of communication (co‐location) 8. Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted 9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design 10. Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential 11. Self‐organizing teams 12. Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

Figure 2: The 12 principles of the agile manifesto

These principles direct the agile project team to work with the understanding that customer satisfaction is the highest target and the software should be delivered as working product as soon as possible. The team accepts changes as they improve the final product and make it more suitable for the customer’s needs. Three of the manifest principles deal with communications, cooperation and collaboration, and are aimed to support a creative and effective environment. The agile approach laid the foundations for several models of software development, when the most popular are XP (Extreme Programming) and Scrum (Leffingwell, 2007; Shore & Warden, 2008). The Scrum, which is the focus of the current study, is an iterative, incremental and rapid process for software project management. The process starts with a vision of the software system, which is later defined by the Product Owner, who is responsible to maximize the ROI (Return on Investment), into a Product Backlog. The Product Backlog includes a list of requirements, ordered by priority. The work is progressed by sprints, where each sprint is an iteration of 1 to 3 weeks. Each sprint starts with a sprint planning meeting where the Product Owner describes the vision and the backlog tasks to the Team, and the Team replies with an estimation of what can be completed within the sprint timeframe. Every day during the sprint, the Team meets for a Daily Scrum meeting, which is a 15 minutes gathering where each team member answers three questions: (1) what have you done since the last Daily Scrum meeting? (2) What do you plan to do until the next Daily Scrum meeting? and (3) What

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel

impediments interfere in your work and limit you from meeting your commitments? This meeting is administered by the Scrum Master who is responsible to remove all impediments and enable effective work by the Team. The Sprint ends with a Sprint Review meeting where the Team presents what was developed. They conduct a Retrospective meeting that is dedicated to lessons learned (Schwaber, 2004; Rossberg, 2008). The following diagram represents the Scrum process.

Figure 3: The Scrum Skeleton (Rossberg, 2008)

The Scrum Team usually includes 5 to 9 members from various professions. In order to complete all the backlog tasks within the defined schedule, i.e., during the Sprint, the Scrum Team should work efficiently and effectively. These professionals are skilled, experienced and responsible workers. They collaborate as a coherent team that takes responsibility on the project success or failure. Therefore, communications in an agile team is a core competence. The need to exchange information in an agile project is crucial as the closure of one task serves as inputs for the next task and the intensive work processes require accuracy, completeness, and openness. Management of successful agile projects includes a communications plan that details the communication processes between the team and the customer. As the relationship with the customer is established on trust and understanding, changes are welcome throughout the development process and the final product is delivered to the customer’s satisfaction. An effective communication plan includes answers to what should be communicated, to whom, when, and how. It aims to coordinate expectations, thus makes the customer a partner in any decision making process in the project (Craig, 2004).

4. The study method In the current research we investigated the following two hypotheses:

There is a positive correlation between the communications with the project’s customer and the project success.

There is a positive correlation between the communication richness and the project success.

The data was collected by an Internet anonymous questionnaire, which was sent to 100 professionals. The questionnaire was distributed to project manages and other stakeholders involved in agile software development projects, that are executed based on the Scrum model. The sample includes 56 respondents who are experienced software project managers, team managers, and subcontractors in Scrum projects. The questionnaire was composed of three sections. Section A: Communication characteristics, which deals with mediums and timing of communication between the team and the customer; Section B: Project success, which evaluates the perceived success of the project; Section C: Project characteristics, which provides informative data regarding the project and the management style. It included statements on a Likert scale of 1‐6, where 1 stands for do not agree and 6 stands for totally agree, as recommended by Chomeya (2010), to which the respondents were asked to provide their perception regarding a specific Scrum project.

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel

Table 1: The research questionnaire

Section A: Communication characteristics

Do Not Agree

Totally Agree

1 2 3 4 5 6 1 The information is documented in a way that all the project

stakeholders can read it.

2 The customer is updated with all relevant project’s aspects 3 We can talk freely with the customer about any issue 4 Management meetings are taking place as planned 5 The customer is present at every status meeting 6 The customer is involved in the decision making process 7 We communicate with the customer by face-to-face meetings 8 We communicate with the customer by mail/phone conversations 9 The project has a dedicated portal 10 The customer has an access to all project information layers 11 The customer is totally involved in the project planning 12 The customer is totally involved in the project tracking and control 13 The customer asks for changes after joint meetings 14 The customer asks for changes after mail correspondence or

phone conversations

15 The customer provides ongoing feedback throughout the project 16 Customer’s changes requests are welcome by the project team 17 The customer approves change requests before development

progress

18 The customer approves acceptance of version before a new version is developed

Section B: Project Success

Do Not Agree

Totally Agree

1 2 3 4 5 6 19 The project meets its schedule plan 20 The project meets its scope plan 21 The project meets its budget plan 22 The project team is responsive for any change request 23 The customer is satisfied with the project’s results 24 The project contributes to the team development 25 The project team is satisfied with the project’s results 26 The project contributes to the organization’s business objectives 27 The project improves the organization’s technological capabilities 28 The organization management is satisfied with the project’s results 29 The final product satisfies the customer’s needs

Section C: Project Characteristics

Number of team members: 1-5 / 6-10 / 11-30 / 30-50 / over 50 Project Budget: Less than $100k / $100k-$500k / $500k-$2M / $2M-$10M / over $10M Project Duration: Less than 3 months / 3-6 months / 6-12 months / 1-2 years / over 2 years Geographical dispersion of project team: local / country / global Project Technology: extend an existing product line / replicate a product / develop a new

product with existing platform / develop a new product new platform / upgrade an existing product / develop new technology

Development model: XP / Scrum / Spiral / Prototype / other Your position in the project: Project Manager / Project Officer / Product Owner / Scrum

Master Team member / Other

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel

The questionnaire was validated by two professional experts and two academic researchers who evaluated the relevance and the explicitly of each question on a scale of 1‐6, where 1 stands for irrelevant/not‐clear at all and 6 stands for very relevant/very clear. The following table summarizes the average values for each of the evaluators’ assessments regarding the questionnaire.

Table 2: Inter‐judge questionnaire assessment

Judge Number

Average Relevance Assessment

Average Explicity Assessment

1 5.59 4.42 2 4.62 5.42 3 5.34 5.88 4 5.42 5.75 Average 5.24 5.36

The questionnaire’s reliability was tested by Alpha Cronbach. The overall questionnaire reliability coefficient is 0.807, which is considered to be sufficient for social sciences studies (Bland & Altman, 1997).

5. Research findings and results The questionnaire respondents are project managers and team members as displayed in the following chart.

Figure 4: Respondents’ distribution by position and project duation

The above data reveals that 50% (28) of the respondents represent relatively long period scrum projects of 1‐2 years, and the majority of respondents are project managers (35, 62.5%). The research major variables are project communication and project success. The project communication was calculated by weighting 4 questions with 15% each, as the literature indicated that these are the most important issues regarding customer communications (questions 7,8,13,14), and 14 questions with 2.85% each, as these are indications of indirect assessment of the communication. The project success variable was calculated by weighting 3 questions with 20% each, as the literature indicated that these are well‐established basic parameters to evaluate project success (questions 19,20,21), and 8 questions with 5% each, as these are indications of indirect assessment of the project success. The research hypotheses were tested using the Pearson correlation coefficient to measure the linear dependence between the research variables. The results are presented.

Table 3: Project communication and project success

Project Success

**Project Communication

Pearson Correlation

.564

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 N 56

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2‐tailed). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2‐tailed).

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel

Table 5: Face‐to‐face communication and project success

Project Success

Face-to-face Communication

Pearson Correlation .603** Sig. (2-tailed) .000 N 56

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2‐tailed). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2‐tailed).

Table 6: Face‐to‐face communication and project schedule, budget and scope

The project meets its schedule plan

The project meets its budget plan

The project meets its scope plan

Face-to-face Communication

Pearson Correlation

.517** .233 .278*

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .084 .038 N 56 56 56

The results reveal that there is a positive correlation between project communication and project success, and that this relationship is gets stronger when the communication is richer, i.e., it is based on face‐to–face.

6. Discussion and conclusions One of the four values in agile software development projects concerns a continuous and effective collaborative relationship with the customer. Sliger & Broderick (2008) explain that this relationship enables the project team to accept frequent changes and implement them successfully, which eventually leads to a successful project. The importance of effective communication between the agile project team and the project customer was confirmed by the results of the current study, and it is aligned with previous studies (Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001; Tengshe & Noble, 2007; Chow & Cao, 2008). Although the correlation between project communication and project success was found to be significantly positive (0.564) and stronger when regarding face‐to‐face communication (0.603), it should be noted these results are moderate. A possible explanation would be that there are intervening variables that were not measured in the current research. Therefore, future study should evaluate the impact or the relationship of additional factors such as organization and team culture, and project and product complexity. The agile approach is focused on delivering a working product that the customer needs and evaluates (Schwaber, 2004). Thus, Tengshe & Noble (2007) argue that customer communication processes including timing and channels of communication should be defined in order to achieve customer satisfaction. In a successful project, the customer is a partner that takes active part in creating the vision and in making decisions. This study was limited by the small number of respondents and their experience in specific type of agile projects. Further research that will be based on massive data collected from an array of agile projects, including scrum model and XP model, will provide sustainable infrastructure for analysis. In addition, although measurement of communication is not an easy task, we recommend on developing more precise technique to assess different communication factors. The question of how to implement the agile methodology in software projects is present in many IT organizations, especially when managers have to consider how to justify extremely expensive customized software like SA, Oracle an s on. We believe that effective communication is a key success factor in any project and especially in agile software development project and as soon as we will be able to provide specific guidelines for effective communication, we will be able to guarantee project success.

References

Andersen, E, Birchall, D., Jessen, S. & Money, A. (2006) Exploring project success. Baltic Journal of Management, 1(2), 127‐ 147.

Bland, J.M., & Altman, D.G. (1997) Statistics Notes: Cronbach's Alpha. BMJ 1997; V.314:572

Vered Holzmann and Ilanit Panizel

Chomeya, R. (2010) Quality of psychology test between Likert scale 5 and 6 points. Journal of Social Science, 6(3):399‐403. Chow, T. & Cao, D. B. (2008) A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects, Journal of Systems and

Software, 81(6), 961‐971. Cockburn, A., & Highsmith, J. (2001) Agile software development, the people factor. Computer, 34(11), 131‐133. Craig, L. (2004) Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide .Addison‐Wesley Boston, MA. Downs, C. W., & Adrian, A. D. (2004) Assessing Organizational Communication: Startegic Communication Audits, Guilford

Press, New York, NY. Feng J., & Sedano, T. (2011) Comparing extreme programming and waterfall project results. Software Engineering

Education and Training, 24th IEEE‐CS Conference 22‐24 May 2011, 482‐486. Gibson, L., Ivancevich, M., & Donnelly, H. (1991) Organizations: Behavior, Structure, Processes, Business Publications,

Plano, Texas. Hartley, P. (2001) Interpersonal Communication 2nd ed., Taylor & Francis e‐Library, New York, NY. Huang, R., Kahai, S., & Jestice, R. (2010) The contingent effects of leadership on team collaboration in virtual teams .

Computers in Human Behavior, 26(5), 1098–1110. Leffingwell, D. (2007) Scaling Software Agility : Best Practices for Large Enterprises. Addison‐Wesley, Upper Saddle River,

NJ. Lengel, R.H., & Daft, R.L. (1988) The selection of communication media as an executive skill Academy of Management

Executive, 2(3), 225‐232. Oxford Dictionary (2013) Oxford University Press, Available at:

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/communication Purdy, J.M., Nye, P., & Balakrishnan, P.V. (2000) The impact of communication media on negotiation outcomes .

International Journal of Conflict Management, 11(2), 162‐187. Rossberg, J. ).2008 ( Pro Visual Studio Team System Application Lifecycle Management .Apress, springer‐ verlag, New York,

NY. Schwaber, K. (2004) Agile Project Management with Scrum. Microsoft, Redmond, WA. Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1963) The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Ill. Shore, J., & Warden, S. (2008) The Art of Agile Developemnt, O’reilly, Media Inc., Sebastopol, CA. Sliger, M., & Broderick, S. (2008) The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility .Addison‐Wesley.Pearson Education Tengshe, A., & Noble, S. (2007) Establishing the Agile PMO: Managing Variability Across Projects and Portfolios. AGILE

2007:188‐193, August 13‐17 Tsun, C., & Dac‐Buu, C. (2008) A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects. The Journal of Systems

and Software, 8(6), 961–971. Winston, W. R. )1970( "Managing the development of large software systems", Proceedings of IEEE WESCON 26 (August),

1–9.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/communication

Copyright of Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Management & Evaluation is the property of Academic Conferences & Publishing International Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.