Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Forthcoming Book: The Art Of Community

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Apr 25, 2009, at 9:40 PM, Michael Barrett wrote:

> TI will guess, a majority of that community may only very rarely  
> meet face-to-face with other members of the community, as most of  
> their communication may be almost exclusively through their computers.

What is unique to agile software development that the programmers work  
very closely in teams. If they aren't in the same location, they use  
video conferencing to stay in touch several times a day. Their general  
email lists are flooded with messages from people who want to keep in  
contact with each other and ideas. They are avidly and productively  
engaged.

That is how Wikipedia works. There is hive of busy bees behind the  
scenes, not a million isolated typing fanatics. People all over the  
world with the same interests find each other and share and share and  
share. And correct, correct, correct.

"Agile" refers to a quick development of highly integrated, supremely  
efficient parts, in contrast to the traditional highly structured  
process of developing software that based on documenting all aspects  
of a problem, laboriously detailing a solution, and then assigning  
fractions of that to isolated programmers who precisely follow a set  
design protocol. Then all of these pieces are checked and fitted  
together in small clusters, tested, and then grouped with larger  
pieces. The final "going live" is very tense. The whole thing can  
crash because one small part is wrong. They then have to find that  
part, and it isn't easy because it could be a missing 'dot.'

Agile moves forward quickly with constant interaction and testing, and  
admires elegance of design. "Elegance" is not a quality well known to  
most "geeks." Think Bill Gates vx Steve Jobs. Windows Vista vs OS X.

Agile is the difference between talking through and resolving a  
conflict  with actively engaged people in close communication, vs  
writing a policy with people who don't want to attend meetings, read  
email, or answer phone calls, and want every decision to be so  
detailed that it will last into eternity.

Agile is based on a whole set of principles that are also under  
constant development -- they flow with the universe. The agile  
community thinks in algorithms and communes with the universe. Some  
gamers and theoretical mathematicians share this engaged mysticism as  
well, but agile involves testing against reality from moment to  
moment. It's grounded in real problems the way mystics are grounded in  
the moment.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org