Communication Guide
Scrum Lite heavily relies on team communication through less formal channels to deliver results. Below are communications objectives by role.
Product Person
- Align stakeholders on vision and strategy
- Clearly articulate the product vision and how it serves business goals
- Ensure executives, developers, and other teams understand product priorities
- Translate between technical and business perspectives
- Communicate technical concepts to business stakeholders without jargon
- Explain business requirements to development teams in relevant technical context
- Manage expectations and build trust
- Set realistic timelines and deliverables
- Communicate trade-offs transparently when resources are constrained
- Share customer insights effectively
- Communicate user needs, pain points, and feedback to influence product decisions
- Use data, user research, and stories to build empathy for customers
- Facilitate decision-making
- Provide clear rationales for product decisions based on data and strategy
- Document and communicate decisions to prevent revisiting settled issues
- Drive team collaboration
- Foster open communication between design, engineering, marketing, and sales
- Create a culture where concerns can be raised early
The most successful product managers tailor their communication style to different audiences while maintaining consistency in the core message across all stakeholders.
Project Manager
- Establish clear project expectations
- Define scope, timeline, budget, and deliverables unambiguously
- Ensure all stakeholders understand their roles and responsibilities
- Provide regular status updates
- Keep stakeholders informed about progress, milestones, and achievements
- Communicate changes to scope, timeline, or budget promptly
- Identify and communicate risks
- Alert stakeholders to potential issues before they become problems
- Present mitigation strategies alongside risk identification
- Facilitate cross-functional coordination
- Bridge communication gaps between different departments and teams
- Ensure information flows efficiently between all project contributors
- Escalate issues appropriately
- Know when and how to escalate problems that threaten project success
- Present issues with potential solutions rather than just highlighting problems
- Document decisions and changes
- Maintain clear records of project decisions and their rationale
- Ensure change requests follow proper protocols and are communicated to all affected parties
- Foster team cohesion
- Create an environment where team members communicate openly
- Facilitate resolution of conflicts that might impact project delivery
The most effective project managers adapt their communication approach based on the audience while maintaining transparency and consistency in messaging throughout the project lifecycle.
Engineering/Development/Designer
- Clearly explain technical concepts
- Translate complex technical details into understandable terms for non-technical stakeholders
- Articulate the reasoning behind technical decisions and approaches
- Set realistic expectations about technical work
- Provide accurate time estimates for development tasks
- Communicate technical constraints and limitations honestly
- Document code and technical decisions
- Write clear documentation for future team members
- Record architectural decisions and their rationale
- Raise technical concerns early
- Flag potential technical issues before they become critical problems
- Propose alternative approaches when identifying technical roadblocks
- Collaborate effectively with team members
- Share knowledge with fellow engineers
- Communicate clearly during code reviews and technical discussions
- Update stakeholders on progress
- Report development status in terms that matter to the project
- Communicate technical milestones achieved and challenges encountered
- Request clarification when requirements are ambiguous
- Ask targeted questions to resolve uncertainty
- Confirm understanding of requirements before beginning implementation
Effective engineer communicators balance technical precision with accessibility, knowing when deep technical details are necessary and when higher-level explanations are more appropriate based on their audience.