By Badri N Srinivasan
Collaboration is an important aspect of any complex activity. On complex projects, a single individual cannot guarantee successful customer delivery—one that meets schedule, quality, cost, and other parameters. It takes a cohesive team.
Scrum promotes these cohesive, self-organizing teams. Scrum teams are tasked with finding the most optimal way to accomplish the work. To do this, they make decisions ranging from how best to meet goals to who should work on which tasks. Reaching group consensus can be difficult. Some opinions are more dominant than others; some voices more hesitant to speak out. Even in agreement, true consensus might not exist. One manifestation of this is the Abilene Paradox.
Abilene Paradox Explained
The Abilene Paradox happens when a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of any of the individuals in the group. This occurs because each member mistakenly believes that his own preferences are a contradiction to the group and, therefore, does not raise objections. When this happens, team members, in an effort not to "rock the boat," don’t voice their thoughts, desires, or intentions.
