Improving Communication in Scrum Teams

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Twitter-like tool designed to enhance communication in Scrum teams by facilitating informal sharing of updates, especially when team members are absent, leading to improved information flow.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel communication tool tailored for Scrum teams that leverages informal sharing to address documentation gaps during absences.

Findings

Improved communication observed in industrial practice

Team members preferred sharing updates via the tool over formal documentation

The tool facilitated better information flow during team member absences

Abstract

Communication in teams is an important but difficult issue. In a Scrum development process, we use the Daily Scrum meetings to inform others about important problems, news and events in the project. When persons are absent due to holiday, illness or travel, they miss relevant information because there is no document that protocols the content of these meetings. We present a concept and a Twitter-like tool that improves communication in a Scrum development process. We take advantage out of the observation that many people do not like to create documentation but they do like to share what they did. We used the tool in industrial practice and observed an improvement in communication.