The one problem I remember from all IT retrospective meetings, many
from back in times where DevOps was not yet practiced, is
"communication", or more precisely "missing communication".
One of the principles behind the agile manifesto I think fits here is:
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.
Although I would replace development team with organization.
I
think it is well known, that geographical distance affects
communication. Somewhere (can't remember where) I read a hypothesis,
that you basically have four classes of communication depending on
distance: Same room, same building, same country, other country. And
Between each class communication quality/rate/propability will drop
significantly. Maybe by an order of magnitude?
Communiction
needs people to overcome a wittingly or unwittingly present
barrier. The more complicated communication is, the higher will be this
barrier. Will you pick up the phone, will you move to check if the other
one is at his desk or do you fall back to writing an email, which
will make communication asynchronous, and is a one way communication
prone to misunderstanding.
If you are in the same room,
you can communicate with everybody just by speeking up. Hopefully only
people involved with the same product are in this room, and there are no
(cubicle) walls.
If you are in the same building, You can stand up and walk to the person you need, but you may not find her and waste time.
In the same country, you will most probably use electronical communication options.
Other countries may add timezone and language issues.
In short, people should talk, face to face if possible.
But
what, if you are not in the same room, but in the same building. And
your issue with somebody else is more than a short talk. Something you
have to work on for let's say hours or even days together.
Well,
I think you should sit together for this time. People/teams should
relocate to optimize communication. And this should be as easy as
possible. Great if you have Laptops and wifi, and there is some free
desk space around. If not, why not using desks with wheels, so it is
easy to move it around, plug in power and network, and off we go.
I want that for years, and did not get it yet. But now I read the Valve employee handbook.
Wow, these guys, among other very interesting ideas, have desks with
wheels, and an automatic tool to locate where people are sitting,
depending on where there workstations are plugged in.
I like that idea. Especially as I think it is not a coincidence, that the word agile is a term related to motion / movement.
Let's move!
