Froggacuda's Weblog

There are three terms to describe the way light shines on an object: Transparent, Translucent, and Opaque. Transparent means that you can see right through it; translucent means that light shines through it, and opaqueness is the quality of blocking all light. Although you may think that vocabulary lessons are not on topic for this forum, I am a fan of the Definitions section of this collective knowledge repository, and point out this fact:

Without a common language it is difficult to communicate.

Transparency is an Agile quality. Although there are several definitions that might apply from the link above, transparency is a communication art. One of the foundations of Scrum is honesty, and honesty leads to transparency for both internal team members and external clients. Being transparent means that all of the work done on a Sprint is visible to those participating in the process. This means document — lightly — as you go, identify problems — impediments — as they arise, ask for clarification — from your Team, your Product Owner, your ScrumMaster — as the Sprint happens.

Opacity occurs when Team members feel like they cannot lift their eyes from the screen and their hands from the keys. If the ScrumMaster or Product Owner only has a foggy idea of what the Team is doing, this is translucency. Transparency is honest communication all the way out to the Stakeholders — that means the client. Even if it is bad news, it is Agile bad news, which means that it is coming now rather than weeks or months down the road. Whenever you can save weeks and months, you know you are getting more Agile.

Mark Levison writes a great blog-style site out at Notes from a Tool User. Aside from being a proponent of Team Programming, Mark simply states that “Transparency builds Trust”. I think that this is a good sound byte to remember. Transparency = Honesty = Trust.