Transparency, Past, Present, and Future

Transparency, Past, Present, and Future

A few years ago, I made the decision to begin public speaking. Teaching in university as a visiting faculty member is the closest experience I have. I believed I was able to face the public without fear. I chose a topic that I was familiar with and decided to give a public speech in front of close friends. Not because I was able to shine but because it was an excellent experience. The most common feedback I received was to slow down when speaking. Using that feedback, I was able to improve my public speaking. My friends were able to attend all my sessions. They not only valued me but also gave me feedback and did a postmortem. To make the presentation better, they kept giving me visual cues such as “Smile,” “slow down,” “volume up,” “time check,” and others. My speaking skills improved over time.

What is the most important part of this story? At first, I thought public speaking was similar to teaching. I could also apply similar principles. My friend’s feedback was a great way to help me learn and improve. This feedback loop allows me the opportunity to examine myself and adjust to get the desired result. It is an example of empiricism. Transparency is key to the feedback process. Even if I’m willing to examine the input and adapt myself, what if my friends praise my efforts and don’t give me any suggestions? Transparency is the opposite of transparency. It means that you have a full understanding of what’s going on. Transparency is essential for inspection and adaptation. Inspection is useless without transparency. What is it like to drive in heavy rain with broken wipers?

Transparency is so essential that Gunther Verheyen (scrum caretaker) shows transparency at the foundational level in the famous “Hous of Scrum” picture in his book. It is also a core value of the “Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe], a principle in “Large Scaled Scrum (LeSS], and Mike Burrows even mentioned it in his book. This is my favorite line from Simon Reindl and Stephanie Ockerman’s book “transparency: an antidote for unrealistic expectations.”

Let’s look at transparency in more detail using the same public speaking example. What if I didn’t check my skill set? What if I was given visual cues by my friends but they aren’t clear enough for me to understand the presentation? I get feedback from them for my future public speaking, but they don’t give me accurate information. These are examples of transparency for the future, present, and past. Transparency must be present in all situations past, present, and future to achieve the best result.

Scrum’s artifacts aim to increase the transparency of key information. It’s not surprising that Scrum uses three artifacts for transparency in the past, present, and future. The product backlog provides a single source for all information that could be contained in the product. The product backlog makes future work transparent. The sprint backlog is a list of product items that are needed for the current sprint, as well as a plan for creating an increment. The Sprint Backlog makes current work transparent. The definition of Done, which is a commitment to the Increment, allows transparency about the Increment and what is included. Increment gives transparency to past work.

It also indirectly answers the question of why Scrum has three artifacts and not four or five.