I have a strange pet peeve. I hate rectangular tables.  It’s a strange pet peeve but its mine and I stick by it. I hate rectangular because they don’t scale. They don’t scale conversations for groups of people greater than say 6 people.  I became aware of just how much I hate rectangular tables last week. I was at QCON in San Francisco and went to dinner with some friends at a great seafood restaurant. There were 4 of us and because there were no tables available but we had to sit at the bar. The bar had 4 empty seats side by side so we took them. Dinner was great and some good conversations took place. The problem is that there were basically two conversations of two people. It would have been my preference to have one conversation with all four people involved.  I cemented my hatred further two days later at another dinner with another rectangular table.  We had a larger group (12+ people) this time.  The communication situation was marginally better for the “middle” people. A larger conversation “cluster” formed in the center with smaller satellites of communication for the “edge” people. 

Flash back two weeks earlier to Kaizen Conf. Kaizen Conf is a conference centered on concepts of continuous improvement, agile and lean software development practices. Most of the sessions I attended were large groups (some 50+) sitting in large circles having healthy and involved discussions on some healthy topics. The benefit of the structure is that everyone can see and hear everyone else.  Communication is more fluid and minimizes the “clustering” effect.  Another benefit of the roundtable structure is its channel balancing effect. No channel is more important or larger than another. There is no “head” of the circle.

I find a lot of similarity in software development practices today.  Classic waterfall development is what I call lunch counter development. Communications happen in differing stages along the lunch counter with the bulk of quality communication happening in the middle. The edge people are generally left out of the main communication and never have their concerns every really addressed. Just think of your customer sitting at one end of the table trying to communicate there needs to the other end of the table.

Now take a look at agile/lean and RAD (iterative) software development practice.  These practices are what I am seeing as round table development. It’s all about value systems. Agile/Lean/RAD developments value communication between all stakeholders at all stages of the development process. Every stakeholder has seat at the table. The cornerstone of these practices is the active communication between all constituents at all times.  Stand up meetings, iteration planning meetings, retrospectives.  All of these (and many more) practices relate to facilitating communications between project stakeholders.

The more I develop software using round table (agile/lean) methodologies and practices the more I find the lunch counter development (waterfall) detestable. Software development practices that emphasize and promote communicating down lunch counter are destined to disappoint and generally leave bad tastes in stakeholder’s mouths. This is not limited to just users being disappointed. All stakeholders are disappointed. How many developers do you know that don’t really care about their end users or the quality of their software? I take it personally when my software doesn’t work, doesn’t deliver its expected value or frustrates my end users who I truly care about. I am betting you feel the same way. Let’s not forget that it’s not just you the developer or the end user that feel the effects of software development process. Along with end users and developers; project managers, managers, executives and customers all feel the true quality of the software process.

Stories differ but legend says King Arthur created his round table to emphasize equal status among all that had a seat.  The most important aspect of any software development process is the communication of requirements. Does your company communicate down a lunch counter or do they sit at the round table?

It's been too long between blog posts so here ya go. This post will end up as my editorial in CoDe Magazine next month. I have more posts in the works related to my recent spelunking into all things agile. Stay tuned.