- Convection Currents of Information
- Jumping Communication Gaps
- Teams as Communities
- Teams as Ecosystems
- What Should I Do Tomorrow?
What Should I Do Tomorrow?
Walk around your place of work. Notice
The convection currents of information
The drafts
The information radiators
The separate communities of practice
The background conversation complimenting or denigrating other groups in the organization
See
How you can improve the flow of information and reduce the erg-seconds required to detect and transmit critical information
If you can colocate your team
What it takes to partition the project so that teams are located around their communication needs
Try
Removing partitions between people
Pair programming
Arranging for daily visits between programmers and business experts
Micro-touch intervention (people making small changes that they don't mind making but that result in their pulling more in the same direction)
Listening to the words of someone in a different professional specialty according to her cultural norms, not your own
Translating between two subcultures in their own cultural terms
Observe the interaction between your methodology's rules and your project's ecosystem. Note the fits and the misfits and the influence of a few key individuals.
Consider what conventions or policies might improve the way in which your group gets things done. They may be conventions about seating, tools, working hours, process, lighting, meetings: anything.
Do this, and you are halfway to tailoring your methodology to fit your organization.