I agree there is a great point in your article. I tend to forget what it was like to work in non-agile environments, now that I am in one. The communication that I have daily seems like something I should have been doing already, and that Agile just coerced that effort out of me/us.

I’ll do a post on my pair programming experiences soon, this is definitely a practice that has been marketed wrongly.

Great posting!

Please also remember that a Scrum Team is made up of more than *just* programmers. I used to be one early in my career, and understand the idea of distractions.

May I recommend the following:

Try embracing one of the other agile techniques such as “pair programming” — OK, this is not “Scrum” but a more advanced engineering practice that requires a willing and able team. While at first glimpse this may seem like a waste (it is not!)… it gets people TALKING with others and does actually improve the overall experience for the team.

My goal of the article was to make sure that people understood that face-to-face communication (unlike this blog comment or the blog I publish weekly) is extremely important to the success of an agile team. It should not be replaced by email and IM.

Contact me via IM if you’d like to discuss it more online (smile). Or call me!

- mike vizdos
http://www.implementingscrum.com
http://www.michaelvizdos.com