Agile Software Development
Автор: Alistair Cockburn /
CHAPTER 3. Communicating, Cooperating Teams Convection Currents of Information
-
Часть 6
-
On project "Winifred" (Cockburn SOOP), the lead programmer announced at regular intervals that design was unnecessary and that code simply grew under his fingertips.
As a predictable result, the young programmers working in the room with him also felt it unnecessary to design. The code looked that way, too.
He eventually left and I took his place. To reverse the situation, I arranged that we designed in conversations at the whiteboard. After some period of doing this, I started getting questions like, "Could you look at the responsibilities (or communication patterns) of these objects? "
By setting an audible tone in the room and making these design discussions legitimate and valued, the programmers started to converse about design together.
Colocation is considered a critical element in Crystal Clear, a light methodology for small teams (see Chapter 6). A rule of Crystal Clear is that the entire team must sit in the same or adjacent rooms, in order to take advantage of convection currents of information and osmotic communications. Crystal un-Clear
"Pat" asked me to visit his Crystal Clear project.
When I arrived, he wasn't at his desk. The secretary said he was with his teammate. I offered to go to that office, but she said, "You can't. There is a combination lock in the hallway over to that section. "! !. .. ? Each time a team member wanted to ask a question, he had to stand, walk across the hall, punch in the lock combination and walk to the team mate's office. Clearly, this team was not getting the benefit of osmotic communication or low cost of information transfer. Changing the team seating was fortunately a simple matter to arrange.
Caves and Common
The Caves and Common room arrangement recommend in XP makes use of all three information exchange mechanisms. It is photographed in action in Figure 3-12 and diagrammed in Figure 3-13.
Figure 3-12. The RoleModel Software team at work (photo courtesy RoleModel Software)
Caves and Commons is very effective, but as Tom DeMarco correctly warns, it can easily be abused to become just a programming sweatshop. Therefore, I describe here not only the room layout, but also the social presuppositions that accompany its use: single project team, good team dynamics, provision for both private and project space.
The term Caves and Common refers to the creation of two zones in the room. The common area is organized to maximize osmotic communication and information transfer. Obviously, for this to make sense, the people in the room must be working on the same project. It is perfect for XP's single team of up to 12 people programming in pairs (Figure 3-12).
The Caves portion of the room is organized to give people a private place to do email, make phone calls, and take care of their need for separation. In RoleModel Software's office, private workstations are set up along one wall (Figure 3-12). At Evant, table came out from the walls on two sides of the room
Figure 3-13. The "caves and common" room layout used at RoleModel Software. (picture courtesy of RoleModel Software)
People who have worked in Caves and Commons facilities say that there needs to be ample wall space for whiteboards and posted flipcharts, and two more types of rooms for the team to use: a food preparation room, and areas for small discussions to take place.
You can see from the picture that while the caves and commons room is very efficient for transmitting information, it is also very efficient for transmitting coughs and colds. People who work in this sort of room encourage their colleagues to stay home if they don't feel well, and to return after they have recovered.
You can also see that it is drafty (in an information sense): the people sitting in this configuration should really need to overhear each other.
Finally, you can see that it is very effective as long as the morale of the group is good. Once the social chit-chat degenerates into negative chatter, the highly osmotic communication again magnifies its effect.
It is useful to compare the above discussions against a group performing classical "engineering", one of the most effective aero-engineering groups, Lockheed's "skunk works" team. This team achieved fame for their rapid development of a series of radical new airplane designs in the second half of the 20th century, under the guidance of Jim Kelly and his successor, Ben Rich. Ben Rich wrote about their experiences in the book, Skunk Works (Rich 1994).
Rich highlights that, among the rules of the group, Kelly insistented on people taking accountability for decisions from design through testing, and on their sitting close together. The following is from that book. Skunkworks Rooms
"Kelly kept those of us working on his airplane jammed together in one corner of our [building]. ..
My three-man thermodynamics and propulsion group now shared space with the performance and stability control people. Through a connecting door was the eight-man structures group. .. . Henry and I could have reached through the doorway and shaken hands.
". .. I was separated by a connecting doorway from the office of four structures guys, who configured the strength, loads, and weight of the airplane from preliminary design sketches. .. .the aerodynamics group in my office began talking through the open door to the structures bunch about calculations on the center of pressures on the fuselage, when suddenly I got the idea of unhinging the door between us, laying the door between a couple of desks, tacking onto it a long sheet of paper, and having all of us join in designing the optimum final design. .. It took us a day and a half. .. "
"All that mattered to him was our proximity to the production floor: A stone's throw was too far away; he wanted us only steps away from the shop workers, to make quick structural or parts changes or answer any of their questions.
Every project team should be on a drive to reduce the total energy cost of detecting and tranferring needed ideas. That means noticing and improving the convection currents of information flow, watching for sources of drafts, getting the benefits of osmotic communication and information radiators. The end goal is to lower the erg-seconds required for team members to exchange information, whatever constraints their organization places on their seating, and with or without technology.
-
Навигация [ Часть 6. Глава 12. ]
Закладки
13. (FIRST TECHNIQUE). .. your sword now having bounced upward,…
After much coaching for six months, his programs still…
Types of Methodologies Rechtin (1997) categorizes methodologies…
Agility implies maneuverability, a characteristic that is more…
The surprising thing about human success modes is how…
Accepting program modifications demanded by changing…
That it is people who design software is terribly obvious.…
1. Project name, job of person interviewed (the interviewee…
It follows that on the Theory Building View, for the primary…
The main question is, if you were funding this project, which…
Crystal Clear is the most tolerant, low-ceremony small-team…
The chart shows the state of the user stories being worked…
For us as designers, it was possible to express both propositional…
Using the planning game in this way, the sponsors can properly…
On a new project, I would use Crystal Orange as a base…
Games are not just for children, although children also…
In arguing for the Theory Building View, the basic issue is…
The group of 17 quickly agreed on those value choices. Developing…