Communication Principles

Agile lives and dies on communication. These laws offer insight into clarity, distortion, alignment, and the hidden cost of miscommunication. By understanding how information moves (or stalls), teams reduce waste, resolve conflict faster, and maintain alignment across roles, time zones, and priorities.

Grice's Maxims of Communication

Effective communication requires clarity, relevance, brevity, and truthfulness.

Law of Communication

Communication fidelity decreases as the number of intermediaries increases.

Postel's Law

"Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."

Conway's Law

"Organizations design systems that mirror their communication structures."

Larman's Laws

Large enterprises resist true Agile transformation, preferring to maintain their existing structures.

Brandolini's Law (Bullshit Asymmetry Principle)

"The energy required to refute misinformation is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."