Managing Communications in Programs and Portfolios

A small scrum project with only one or two teams has a distinct advantage over large, traditional projects when it comes to communications. Firstly, the team is usually co-located in their own project space. Secondly, the communications roles and events are clearly defined. The Product Owner owns all communications that are external to the project, while the Scrum Master is responsible for convening meetings for purely internal communications, like the Daily Standup meeting, as well as meetings including external stakeholders, such as the Sprint Review. Both the Agile Manifesto and Scrum regard face-to-face communications as preferable to written or other less direct communications, and a typical Scrum facilitates this. When a project is larger, and where projects are subordinate to programs and portfolios, the need for communications becomes even more important but also more complex.

Enabling Communications on a Large Scale.

The communications process for a large project, a program and a portfolio is similar, and has the same challenges:-

• teams involved are not necessarily sitting together; they may even be on different continents.
• Small team members are generalists; with large projects there can be specialist teams, for instance IT architects or UX specialists, and this can create interdependencies, as other teams are dependent on their outputs
• The structure of Scrum is based around the single team; in order to accommodate large projects, programs and portfolios, additional meetings and artefacts are required.
• Additional roles had to be created to enable communications flow on all levels. These are supplementary Product Owner and Scrum Master roles.

While a common process can be applied, there are some small differences that cater for the different outcomes required by projects, programs and portfolios.

Communications for Large Projects

The focus for the project is producing a successful product.

A large Scrum project has more than 3 scrum teams and the communications between them need to be synchronized. There are two roles specifically required for large projects:-

• The Chief Product Owner, who has overall product responsibility and who coordinates the overall Project Backlog across teams, primarily via each Product Owner for each Scrum, but broader communications to all the teams. He prioritizes the requests at project level and communicates these priorities back to each Product Owner. He also communicates at project level with the stakeholders and with the Program Product Owner.
• The Chief Scrum Master, who is the Scrum steward at project level. He interacts with the Scrum masters from each team and is responsible for internal communications between teams. He facilitates the “Scrum of Scrums” (SoS).

For large projects there is a meeting called the Scrum of Scrums (SoS) that has some commonalities with the Stand-up meeting. It addresses what each team has accomplished since the last meeting and their targets for the next meeting, what roadblocks have occurred and what interdependencies exist. It is recommended that if there are any issues between teams that need resolving, they are carried over to a meeting after the SoS, also organized by the Chief Scrum Master.

Recommended Further Reading

The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: