What Makes for a Good Volleyball Team?
Well, good athletes of course—tall, athletic, quick, with good mental acuity.
And you have those athletes, right? Because like every organization, you only hire the best. Even if "best" means having wicked growth potential.
But regardless of the individual members of your team, there is a secret sauce to winning—the same secret sauce that good volleyball teams use...
Communication
When you watch volleyball players on the court, they are all talking to each other—calling for the ball, calling someone else off the ball, and so on.
Like all metaphors, this one breaks down at some point, because we are talking about pushing bits as a team, not spiking the ball in our opponents' faces.
But it does tie into the Agile Manifesto:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Three of the four principles are about communication: valuing people over process, collaborating with customers, and responding to change.
All of those require clear communication.