Agile Software Development
Автор: Alistair Cockburn /
CHAPTER 3. Communicating, Cooperating Teams Jumping Communication Gaps
-
Часть 3
-
If you are willing to try out this experiment, please let me know: what you did, what happened, and then, what you thought about it months later.
As a thought experiment about the utility of the graph and the experiment, consider the book Design Patterns (Gamma 1993). This book is excellent but difficult. I still have trouble understanding the patterns that I have not yet used. I suppose that others have similar difficulties. Imagine that instead of trying to extract the meaning of the patterns from the book, you could see one of the authors explaining the pattern in a video clip. They would, of course, rely on tonal inflections, gestures, and timing to get the idea across. I'm sure that I would understand those difficult patterns a lot easier, and suspect most people would.
The lesson is that we should try to move team communications up the curve as far as possible, for the situation at hand. We should rely on informal, face-to-face conversation, not merely tolerate it. Face-to-face communication should become a core part of your development process.
There is a second lesson to pay attention to. Sometimes a cooler communication channel works better, because it contains less emotional content. Cooler Communications Needed
A project leader told me that her team deals better with her when they speak over the phone, because she is too aggressive with her emotions in person.
A married couple told me that they communicated in a more "even" and less emotional level over the phone than in person, just because the face-to-face setting flooded them with visual and emotional cues. Hovenden (1999) describes a meeting in which a senior designer ruined a meeting's original plan by standing up and taking over the whiteboard for the rest of the meeting. In this case, the lack of anonymity created a social ranking that interfered with the intended meeting.
Bordia and Prashant (1997) describe that brainstorming improves when social ranking information is hidden from the participants. McCarthy and Monk (1994) remind us that email has the advantage of allowing people to reread their own messages before sending them, thereby clarifying the message.
Thus, warmer communications channels are more effective in transferring ideas, but cooler communications channels still have uses.
Stickiness and Jumping Gaps across Space
We can see, at this point, how the team of Russian programmers (Chapter 1) got low cost per idea transfered. Sitting in a room together, they got convection currents of information, osmotic communication, face-to-face communication, realtime question and answer.
So why did they need to write use cases at all?
The answer is: To give the information some stickiness. Information on paper has a sort of stickness that the information in a conversation doesn't, a stickiness we sometimes want.
The person who went to Russia with the use cases wanted to make sure that he did not forget what he was supposed to cover in his conversations. He wanted that after he explained the use cases to the Russian programmers, they could subsequently read the use cases, understand and recall the information without having to ask him again.
The use case writer, knowing that the use cases were only game markers to remind them of what they already knew or had discussed, could balance the time spent writing the use cases against the time that would be spent discussing other material. He could decide how much detail should go into the writing.
Figure 3-15. Two people working at a shared, sticky information radiator. (Courtesy of Evant, Inc. )
Large, sticky, revisable shared information radiators are often used by people to achieve greater understanding and to align their common goals.
Figure 3-15 and Figure 3-16 shows a useful mix of whiteboards (static information radiators) and people (dynamic information radiators).
Both whiteboards and paper are particularly good, and can be written on by all parties, making them shared, sticky information radiators.
Until recently, archivability and portability were still problems with whiteboards:. If a discussion results in really valuable information being placed on the whiteboard, no one dares erase it, and the group can't archive it. This slows the archiving of valuable information and shuts down the board for the next use. As Ron Jeffries put it, "If you never erase the whiteboards, you might as well write on the walls. "
Figure 3-16. Dynamic and static information radiators at work. (Courtesy of Evant, Inc. )
A colleague, Mohammad Salim, responded to this situation by covering all the walls and hallways with rolls of butcher paper, so that people could literally draw on the walls wherever they were. He said, "If you have to take time to walk to a workstation or find a blank whiteboard, you just lost your idea. " He continued, saying that when a section of paper gets full, to just roll it up and date it. That way all discussions are archived and can be pulled out for later examination. I noticed in his description of finding rolls of paper for later examination, how he made use of humans being good at looking around, as discussed in the last chapter. Also that he worked hard to reduce the cost of invention and communicaiton, while preserving archivability for later discussions.
A number of people report they are using digital cameras in conjunction with software that cleans up the image ("Whiteboard Photo" at www. pixid. com is one that they reference). Printing whiteboards continue to be very practical. Often, people start a discussion thinking the outcome will not be significant, but see at the end that the whiteboard holds valuable information. With printing whiteboard they can simply push the Print button if they wish.
Different information radiators are suited for different sizes of discussion groups, of course. A piece of paper works for two or three people, a whiteboard works for perhaps a dozen.
-
Закладки
That it is people who design software is terribly obvious.…
Games are not just for children, although children also…
While writing, reading, typing, or talking, we pick up traces…
Agility implies maneuverability, a characteristic that is more…
The group of 17 quickly agreed on those value choices.…
On a new project, I would use Crystal Orange as a base…
1. Project name, job of person interviewed (the interviewee…
Accepting program modifications demanded by changing…
The main question is, if you were funding this project,…
Figure 4-1. Elements of a methodology. Roles. Who…
The industry is littered with projects whose sponsors did…
Types of Methodologies Rechtin (1997) categorizes methodologies…
Using the planning game in this way, the sponsors can…
The surprising thing about human success modes is how nebulous…
For us as designers, it was possible to express both propositional…
After much coaching for six months, his programs still looked…