Stimulating communication

I finally took the time to answer all the interview questions from the university guys that are writing a thesis on XP. In doing so, I came to think again about the importance of stimulating communication in development teams. I realized that more communication stimulates yet more communication, and that the opposite probably is true: less communication works as a downward spiral to even less communication – I can certainly feel that this has been true in projects I’ve participated in.

At the company I currently work for, we’ve experienced times of much communication and times of less communication. It’s clear to me that the amount of communication doesn’t have to do with the team members, but with the team/project leader. Of course, if the team members were all very driven to communicate, there would be less to do for the team leader in this regard – but I feel that as soon as you get communication going in our team, it wouldn’t require much effort to keep it going.

Earlier, there was a project leader that acted as as part XP coach, part XP customer, and that quickly got into XP. Unfortunately, he’s no longer working for the company, but during the months he worked there, he really managed to stimulate communication and creativity.

Part of this is also to realize it’s important to have One Team (DOC) – as opposed to dividing the team into lots and lots of smaller projects. If two people are working in two different projects, it doesn’t matter that they sit next to each other: either one isn’t very likely to ask the other for help. It will occur, but not several times a day.

Stimulating communication is a tricky issue. First, everyone on the team must feel that it’s not only allowed, but encouraged. If there’s a coach or project leader that actively, but inobtrusively, tries to enforce communication – at least initially – this is of great help. But besides that, I’m pretty much at a loss regarding what to do. But I do know that something in the culture or the organization can make people feel frustrated about sitting (or standing) and talking with people – as if this wouldn’t be “working”. Communication is essential to success! (There must be lots of good books about this.)