Communication is one of the key factors that drive teams towards their goals, making possible the exchange of ideas, plans or problems. It is therefore crucial to do it efficiently, while keeping in mind that you’re still talking to humans and not some kind of information processing machines.
It is therefore essential to choose your media wisely according to each situation, but to my experience so far, nothing compares, in terms of efficiency, to just saying out loud what you have to say. Emails may be useful for storing decisions or ideas, but it’s by live talking that you can transmit them in the best way.
Personally, whenever I need to discuss something with my team, I always prefer talking to them rather than exchanging emails or leaving offline messages on their IM accounts. I do write emails on important matters, but mostly aiming to archive the discussions for later reference, or when they involve many people which may not be in the same office or on the same schedule.
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#1 by Scott Duncan on January 9, 2009 - 8:04 PM
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I agree with this and find it discouraging that many companies getting into agile also want to start with distributed team structures so that their only means of communicating is by email, IM, Webex/MeetingPlace/etc. At least they should look into telepresence facilities. But companies, especially the hi-tech ones often getting on the agile bandwagon, are often already used to distance relationships that they see no need to try agile with collocated teams first or, at least, distributed in a couple locations and within reasonable time zone difference.
I know of some teams, just into agile for a few months, where they are across 3 continents and the Scrummasters in a couple cases are actually all alone in their location, i.e., they are not collocated with any of the other team members.