I travel a lot on airplanes for work. On a recent Sunday afternoon flight, the person sitting next to me was legally blind. His service dog was a female German shepherd named Yanni. As we flew to the East Coast, I had plenty of time to meet Yanni, and to reflect on how Yanni might teach us all some important things about technology, people, and the businesses we serve. In particular, she reminded me how aligning business and IT depends on clear goals and communication in agile teams.
Jitters
Training for a service dog can take as long as two years. For Yanni, this included several relatively complex tasks to be able to assist her blind owner. Yanni is smart, capable, alert, and highly trained. Despite Yanni's training across a wide variety of situations and conditions, when the plane started moving towards the runway Yanni came a bit undone. She whined and fidgeted, and it was clearly a struggle to keep her cool. She did not like not being able to see and understand and see where she was going. It unnerved her. That simple need to see ahead echoes transparency in agile: context calms confusion.
Just like Yanni, our business customers want to see where they are going. They are uncomfortable when they cannot. Most don't understand our work, and rely on us to help guide them to effective solutions. To do this successfully, we should think differently about how we engage and communicate with them. Translation is an important part of engaging business customers that we discussed previously, and so is transparency. How does transparency work in our favor?
Transparency and Pillars
Transparency is a pillar of scrum and agile methods, central to scrum best practices, and it must exist for teams to work well together. However, transparency is not something that comes naturally to technologists who have spent their entire education and career coding, designing, and creating technology solutions. It involves engaging and working directly with our teammates or customers, something usually left to project managers or directors. We have little formal training on how to engage customers, and often find these interactions uncomfortable or difficult.
As a result, when project challenges occur or problem domain questions arise, most technologists keep their heads down and keep pushing forward. The results are all too predictable. Things usually get worse. Not communicating about the challenges and not obtaining feedback on vague or unclear requirements quickly leads to project delays and suboptimal solutions.
One alternative to this dynamic is transparency—scrum transparency in particular. This is one of the reasons agile and scrum works. The Scrum Guide puts it this way:
- "The process must be visible to those responsible for the outcome, and
- Observers share a common understanding. The Scrum Team and its stakeholders agree to be open about all the work and the challenges with performing the work.
- To the extent that transparency is complete, decisions have a sound basis."
Towards Common Understanding
Transparency in scrum means everyone sees the work, and shares a common understanding. The result is that stakeholders make sound decisions based on the best information. We measure our progress daily through a burndown chart, and immediately understand when a challenge occurs.
As a result, several positive things occur, especially within cross-functional agile teams:
- First and foremost, the best and most current project information is available to everyone. This is a significant win for the business, as they need to adapt daily to constantly changing business conditions.
- Second, obstacles and unclear requirements are immediately identified and addressed. Having an empowered product owner on the team—fulfilling the product owner role in scrum—results in real time feedback rather than trying to obtain clarifications over the course of days, weeks, or months.
- Finally, we completely shift the dynamic we have with our customers. Subtly and gradually, we begin to face our problems side by side.
From Opposition to Partnership
Side-by-side conversations are a bit magical. We are on the same side of the table as our business partners, working together on a common problem. And, when difficulty arises, we are much better positioned to work through the issues together.
Monique Valcour notes in the Harvard Business Review that this side by side dynamic shifts difficult conversations from opposition to partnership: "In the midst of a difficult conversation, it's easy to see your conversational partner as your opponent. Try repositioning yourself — both mentally and physically — to be side by side with the other person, so that you're focused on the same problem. Use the metaphor of 'coming around to the same side of the table' to remind yourself to seek to build an alliance when a conversation gets stuck."
When we stop and think about it, none of us really wants to work on the other side of the table from our business partners. Our challenge is that we sometimes lack the training and understanding to position ourselves on the same side as our customer. I see this dynamic in both the workplaces I visit and the graduate classes I teach. The good news is that we can learn to have these conversations side by side, and foster a completely different partnership dynamic. The transparency of the scrum process is a huge step in the right direction. Instead of confronting one other when a problem arises, we stand alongside our customers to discuss a problem we both have in common.
Ode to Yanni
The job of the technologist is to translate complex problems into solutions that are simple, straightforward, and efficient. We cannot do this effectively without our business partners and customers. The more feedback and communication we have from them, the faster we can develop solutions that drive competitive advantage and make a difference. Transparency accelerates this progress, and fosters productive relationships where our technical and interpersonal skills are valued.
Yanni has learned a lot of new lessons in her lifetime. Are we willing to learn to be more transparent in our interactions and relationships with our business partners, and to grow our soft skills? The return on investment might be surprising, and we all might see the path forward more clearly.
Q&A
Question: What does transparency mean in Scrum, and why is it essential?
Answer: In Scrum, transparency means the process is visible to those responsible for outcomes, and everyone shares a common understanding of the work and its challenges. The Scrum Guide notes that when transparency is complete, decisions have a sound basis. It’s a core pillar that lets teams and stakeholders see progress (e.g., via a burndown chart), spot issues early, and align business and IT around clear goals.
Question: Why do technologists often struggle with transparency and customer engagement?
Answer: Many technologists are trained to design and code, not to facilitate customer conversations. Without formal training in engagement, they may keep their heads down when problems arise, avoiding uncomfortable discussions. This lack of communication leads to delays and suboptimal outcomes. Embracing transparency counters this by surfacing challenges and clarifying vague requirements early.
Question: How does transparency shift the relationship with business partners?
Answer: Transparency moves the dynamic from opposition to partnership. When work and challenges are openly shared, teams and stakeholders can stand “side by side,” focusing on the same problem rather than each other. As noted in HBR, mentally and physically coming to the same side of the table helps reset difficult conversations. The result is faster clarifications, joint problem-solving, and stronger trust.
Question: What practical practices in the article demonstrate Scrum transparency day to day?
Answer: Making work visible to everyone, measuring progress daily with a burndown chart, openly flagging obstacles and unclear requirements, and involving an empowered product owner for real-time feedback. Together, these practices ensure the best, most current information is available and issues are addressed immediately.
Question: How does Yanni’s story connect to agile teamwork and customers?
Answer: Yanni became anxious when she couldn’t see where the plane was going—lack of context created jitters. Similarly, business customers are uneasy when they can’t “see ahead.” Scrum transparency provides that context, calming confusion, accelerating feedback, and enabling teams to deliver solutions faster and with greater competitive impact.
