This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Keith Ray. Original Post: Agile is Based on Communication and Feedback Feed Title: MemoRanda Feed URL: http://homepage.mac.com/1/homepage404ErrorPage.html Feed Description: Keith Ray's notes to be remembered on agile software development, project management, oo programming, and other topics. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Keith Ray Latest Posts From MemoRanda

Talking with my wife about "solving problems for people" versus "solving technical problems". In the early days of computer engineering / computer science, just getting the software and hardware to do something useful was a problem, and developers could easily spend all their time on technical problems and avoiding people.

Today, (at least in theory) developers don't have to worry so much about technical problems (other than those problems we've created for ourselves).

The majority of problems today are those needs and wants that *people* have and to solve them requires that the developers understand other people -- which requires interaction and two-way communication, preferably face-to-face. Two-way communication is necessary to get proper feedback on whether information is being understood on both sides.

Esther Derby and Diana Larsen provide a workshop on agile skills that starts with communication. They call it Secrets of Agile Teamwork (PDF), See also her website. It seems that their next workshop is June 6-8 in Portland, Oregon.