Without being aware and understanding of what’s going on, it’s impossible for those for whom the work is done to correctly assess the current state of affairs of value delivery. Furthermore, those doing the work cannot properly inspect & adapt their course of action, as they don’t know where they are now. This is where transparency steps in. We can distinguish a couple of transparency levels.

What is transparency?

Strictly speaking, transparency means there are no secrets between those doing the work and those for whom the work is being done. Furthermore, everyone has the access to the same data, and must understand them the same way. In this respect, transparency is more than just being visible.

Levels of transparency

Depending on their impact and range, four transparency levels might be distinguished:

Everyone is responsible for transparency

What make a good transparency is that everyone strives to propagate it both inside and outside the team. In Scrum transparency ties in closely with artifacts: the Product Backlog, the Sprint Backlog and an Increment. These three sources of facts that have to be transparent to be inspected, and adapted if necessary. Also, transparency at a team level relates to the values of openness and courage. It’s hard to be transparent when you feel insecure

Scrum events and transparency levels

The regularity of Scrum events and the inspect-and-adapt loop help ensure transparency. Agile is a constant improvement to, which is impossible to achieve if you can’t determine what to improve.