Developers do not like them, loathe giving them and do not see the value as they are inaccurate. Business bods love them, know they are inaccurate, and use them for decision making only. Developers need to learn to view them from a business bod / manager viewpoint ot see the real busines value of these high level costings.

As Chris pointed out, action is spawned by direct interaction — so it is an essential part of bringing a diverse team together and get them all rowing in the same direction.

Oana

I would like to see more leadership in this industry of ours and less management. I think I may be a bit off topic and I apologize for the rant.

We need to make sure our communication, whether it be email, wikis, meetings(local and remote) are focused and effective. Meetings, in particular, should have goals behind them determined before hand and metered to keep people on topic and focused. SCRUM meetings are nice as long as they are focused. All types of meetings should have an initial agenda and make sure you accomplish the purpose of the meeting and shelf ratholes to be discussed afterwards.

Better communication reduces the view that IT people live in an ivory tower.

I have been around people who can talk and spin so cleverly that at the end, the group resembles the end frame of a well written Dilbert strip. Talking, good…listening, also good…but where does that lead?

Great discussion topic Chris!

And dialogs are both visual and verbal. The meeting of actual people can never be replaced by e-mails and such: these are just complements.

The same goes with meetings. It is funny because there are formal meetings and informal meetings and there should really be room for both. When we talk about useless meetings – how often do we mean the informal meetings? But do we plan for them?

This means that when issues arise (as they always do), a developer is often the last person to feel comfortable sitting down and talking directly to another person about what’s going on. Instead, developers often use email to discuss serious issues. Unfortunately, my other observation is that few programmers are good writers — at least from the perspective of writing clearly and getting to the point. So this means that the emails, reports, or tweets they send rarely solve the problem.

I recommend that members of the development team practice talking to one another, asking questions, and learn to overcome the discomfort of saying “Sorry, I was wrong,” or “Can you explain that again? — I’m not sure I understand.”

The more people communicate honestly and clearly when they speak, the less they’ll have to resort to confusing, long-winded emails that often get misunderstood.

Business units or Departments are a form of community that will be made up of these types of people. The clash in these groups is generally only from the first sector. People trying to make things happen that are going in either apposing or possibly conflicting directions. Generally it is type 1 fighting their way through type 2&3 groups.
Your comment is so correct when it comes to type 1 groups.
They need to stay focussed to talk, agree, plan, action and review as only by discussions they can agree and take action. Via meetings we plan together and take the necessary actions to close the gaps in our targets.

The issue is “Lean” is being replaced by “use to having”. We can no longer trim down easily as the influences of type 2 & 3 have become so common place in our world.
Look at the news…once upon a time 1 hour would give you all the day’s news…Now it is a day long event, bombarded from everywhere and anywhere with information. The ones who watch things happen – they report, whilst the ones who wander what happened – they watch. Incidentally, not to do anything about it but just to be aware.

Those that make things happen are busy doing, talking to encourage and improve…Quite often accused of not listening enough or being dangerous to the status quo…Do remember we are in the minority.

Thanks for allowing me to express my views.
Respectfully,
Luis De Jesus

Interestingly, every now and then the information being shared to type 2 & 3 about extraordinary type 1 people, can motivate them into action and a subsequent change. This then raises the question “is all the information cost and sharing, worth the converted few we get as a result”. The statistics in a high growth market says a resounding “yes”, but let us see in a low percentage growth period that is coming (arrived aready) what the answer will be.

http://froggacuda.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/art-of-scrum-agile-does-not-mean-by-the-seat-of-your-pants/

In truly lean organizations, decisions are made at the point of generation by those closest to the process. If we continue to need multiple layers of approvals by non-resident or absentee process owners, there is no form of electronic media that will guarantee the approval is given, only that it gets there faster and waits longer. Those who truly improve, have moved decision making down in the organization to the point of execution.

I feel that we have all come to rely on technology to make things faster, but until we can all agree on the process and make decisions in “real” time or face to face, technology will just seem like hurry up and wait. How do we utimately make decision making faster?

Regards,

Ron Jacques

Many of my fellow technology professionals cannot communicate beyond tech acronyms or concepts, and it kills their organizational visibility. The few team members that can wear both an IT hat and a ‘Joe the Plumber’ hat are the heavy hitters and always in high demand. They’re not necessarily any smarter than the jargon slingers, but again, are extremely more visible. Consequently, they’re also the folks getting the nice raises and upward momentum.

My suggestion is to look into your local Toastmaster’s club. The Toastmasters organization is priceless for persons looking for a safe place to learn how to communicate better. A great quote I heard once was “Toastmasters is a great place to come and fail, er practice.” Very highly recommended.

Best Regards,
–D

The first factor is related to what the current generation expects. Today’s younger generation (I’m not saying where I fall in this.) grew up with technology all around them. The web/internet is a way of life not just an option. They have learned to process information much differently then their parents. Every person under the age of 30 that has a cell phone knows how to text. I’ve seen people in the same room texting to each other! If this is how they share and process information, support them, don’t try to change them.

The second factor is related to issues such as Enron and the sub prime meltdown. In the corporate world today, more than ever, “if it is not written down, it was never said”. We need to be able to prove conversations and decision occurred. Additionally, we need to document who made the decisions. Failure to document is to invite trouble.

The third factor is information dissemination and transparency. The use of tools such as wikis and blogs allow us to say something once and provide a way for many people to use that information. This enhances the value of the communications as more people can make use of the information.

Lastly, there is the need for asynchronous communication over synchronous communication. In today’s world, we are expected to take on many roles and projects. In this mode, we cannot always engage in synchronous communication (i.e. talking to someone). We need asynchronous communication in order to prioritize what we do when.

Maybe if you want to have dinner one day, we could sit and talk about this.

“Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.” – Robert Greenleaf

I’ve also found that too many people I work with don’t understand how important good manners are, especially in a business setting.

Brainstorming for design or a requirements walk through
achieves better results than merely the standard process documentation / tools of communication.

And yet I have seen design meetings yield no results and requirements walk through make requirements no more clearer than they were before.

In-person communication / meetings is a tool and like any other whose success depends on the relevance and applicability of this particular tool to the given situation and the capability of the participants to utilise the tool.

As argued by technical architects, an async interaction mode helps to handle larger volumes through prioritization (euphemism for ignoring), multi-tasking, loosely coupled (location/time independence) mode, etc. These seems to be equally applicable to us now! And we end up creating separate folders in our email boxes and setup rules for handling various messages based on source, importance, time, nature of content etc…:)

The bottom line is “In corporate environment, its the right and wrong that builds the foundation of success, NOT the good and bad.”