One of my latest Aha!s is viewing the flow of information between people on a project in terms of convection currents - consider gas dispersion, but memes-meters / minute instead of mole-meters/second.
Martin Fowler just said, "I wish we could get rid of this partition here, so I could see my office mate while we're talking." Then we walked out into the hallway and saw the team's poster showing story cards moving across and up the page to completion. He commented on the QA group's changed perception of the project status once they could see the stories progressing their away along. The poster positively "radiates" information to the passerby.
Good information flow within a team is Osmotic Communication, it flows into people's background information without their even knowing about it.
Ward Cunningham commented that Pair Programming with pairs that constantly reconfigure is like Conduction, rather than Convection.
All showing the metaphor holds. How are the Convection Currents Of Information on your project?
Just beware drafts!!! --Alistair Cockburn (00-04-11)
See original on c2.com 