AgileAttitudes Article
 
 
 

Vol 01 Issue 05- Communication

  
 
Back to the list of articles Agile Attitudes Volume 1, Issue 5 June 24, 2004 A free bi-weekly email newsletter Brought to you by Agile Rules consulting www.agilerules.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Welcome to Agile Attitudes, a newsletter of ideas, insights and technical tips that help people find better ways to develop software. Feel free to share this with anyone - just be sure you send or print the whole thing, including the copyright notice. Directions for managing your subscription are below. O><O><O><O><O><O Nancy V. and Ron Morsicato will be speaking at the XP Agile Universe Conference, and Embedded Systems Conference. See below for details. O><O><O><O><O><O Communication by Ron Morsicato and Nancy V. "No matter what you have to say...people gonna listen in their own way" - Mose Allison Probably the most difficult agile principle to adhere to is communication. Communication is a 2-way street. Feedback is just as important as what you send out - probably more so. Just as we agile practitioners value test results over analysis, we value feedback and listening as the chief way to know we are communicating accurately with others. Because people will interpret things in their own way, we must do more than simply write it once. Recognizing this, agile software developers use a number of communication artifacts to ensure that communication is effective and accurate. Communication artifacts are facilitators in improving the communication between people. They open up a channel for communication that you might not otherwise have simply due to personality, language, distance, etc. The most ubiquitous communication artifact is formal documentation. Such documentation has a place, a very important place for a very good reason - it's persistent. Unfortunately, it lacks two other character- istics that are important to agile developers: it is not readily changeable, and there is no feedback between its author and a particular reader. If you adopt a waterfall approach, you need to capture the prior stage in a persistent medium that can be referred to. Formal documents become the glue between stages because you need persistence. In agile development, you begin an iteration with requirements selection and end with, in a period of a few weeks or even days, deployable code. You can take advantage of the fact that persistence is not necessary over a short period of time and can adopt communication artifacts that are changeable and provide feedback. Agile practitioners are pragmatic. They choose communication artifacts that have a given usefulness at a particular time, and abandon the artifact when the artifact no longer serves its purpose. In an agile environment you'll find many communication artifacts - progress charts, test results, UML diagrams, checklists, and so on. They appear on the most convenient media: whiteboards, sticky notes (large and small), photocopies of notebook pages and, of course, computer generated printouts. There are formal documents too, when persistence is called for, as when a project is terminated and information needs to be provided for future activity, like maintenance or continued development by another team. The value of communication is more than a record of decisions. It is a mechanism for making software better, more fit for use as it matures. To agile developers, there is no better way to communicate than to jointly observe the results of tests! O><O><O><O><O><O More articles on Agile software topics at http://www.agilerules.com Within our company we have a sub-specialty in embedded systems. Our site has articles on embedded XP and we support a discussion list focused on the use of agile methods for building embedded software. The list signup info is at http://www.agilerules.com/mailinglists.phtml O><O><O><O><O><O To help you get started with in-depth research into Agile Attitudes topics, we have added a Library section to our web site at http://www.agilerules.com/library.phtml Order using our links and receive discounts up to 30%! O><O><O><O><O><O If you enjoyed this issue or found it useful, forward it to a friend! Help spread the word about better ways to build software - invite your friends and colleagues to join our growing reader community at http://www.agilerules.com/mailman/listinfo/agileattitudes O><O><O><O><O><O Looking for a speaker for your next corporate or society meeting? We present dynamic, informative programs on topics of interest to managers and technical staff in their transition to more flexible, robust ways to create software. O><O><O><O><O><O Want to reprint this issue in your company or society newsletter? For permission to reprint any of the articles, contact us at info@agilerules.com. O><O><O><O><O><O Public Appearances Nancy Van Schooenderwoert is currently presenting a paper "Taming the Embedded Tiger: Agile Test Techniques for Embedded Software" at the Agile Development Conference in Salt Lake City, June 22 - 26, 2004. See http://www.agiledevelopmentconference.com/schedule/expreports.html Ron Morsicato and Nancy V. will speak at XP/Agile Universe Conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; August 15 - 18, 2004 Agile Methods for Safety-Critical Software Development. See http://www.agileuniverse.com/schedule/index Nancy Van Schooenderwoert will present on "Embedded Extreme Programming Experience Report and Clinic" in Boston, September 13 - 16, 2004 See http://www.esconline.com/boston/ If you would like to receive an email as soon as we know of an event in the Boston area of interest to the agile software community, you can sign up for the announcements list at http://www.agilerules.com/mailman/listinfo/agileannounce O><O><O><O><O><O Your feedback is welcome! Send feedback to info@agilerules.com To manage your subscription: http://www.agilerules.com/mailman/listinfo/agileattitudes O><O><O><O><O><O Brought to you by Agile Rules consulting 162 Marrett Road, Lexington MA 02421 Copyright (c) 2004 Agile Rules info@agilerules.com O><O><O><O><O><O Privacy notice: We will not release a subscriber's address to any third party for any reason. This is a strictly opt-in newsletter. No one is ever subscribed without their explicit request. _______________________________________________ AgileAttitudes mailing list AgileAttitudes@agilerules.com http://www.agilerules.com/mailman/listinfo/agileattitudes </plaintext> </td id="bodytable_r1_c3_body"> </tr id="bodytable_r1"> </table id="bodytable">