The Value of Planning Together

If you’ve taken part in any of our Scrum classes, then you know we highly value the power of face-to-face communication. The emergent power of real-time collaboration allows us to uncover one of the most detrimental nuances of the work we do in software development: ASSUMPTION.

We begin with the idea from the Agile Manifesto (principle #5), which reminds us that,

“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

To be clear, at the end of the day, we can all readily agree that “the most efficient and effective method” … … IS face to face… so how do we deal with this in the real world? (And yes, I live there too…)

We can use several methods if there isn’t the direct or immediate ability to do face to face:

• Emailing
• Phone conversations
• Video Conferencing

If you track through these, one by one, you’ll see we’re moving from uni-lateral communication to bi-directional. Obviously bi-directional is far better… so the question we have to ask is:

“How can we move to the most effective methods to get work done?”

What we love to see, when we work with clients, are the powerful ways they change their operational support mechanisms to allow for powerful conversations to happen.

You don’t need to go far on a google search to find plenty of examples of how bringing people together to solve problems is pretty much the best way to do work!

We invite you to find more about how we can help your organization build powerful software, services, or products. We’ve seen it done poorly. We’ve also been in the trenches long enough to know how to do it beautifully.