I want to avoid the situations when my developers do not share the common knowledge (solutions for the problems they encountered, cool tips, common mistakes, shortcuts for achieving particular goal, configuration issues, partial requirements, etc.) with each others. I’m taking about the situation when such lack of communication is accidental (a result of the misunderstanding or improper management) – I’m not thinking about the situations when developers deliberately keep the knowledge for themselves.
I believe that the following techniques are extremely useful to improve the information flow within the developers team:
- XP pair programming – due to the knowledge exchange within the pair (and due to the regular pair mixing).
- stand-up meetings – due to the occasion to tell the others on what you’re working on and what problems you encountered.
- trainings/presentations/coaching prepared by the lead-developers to the rest of the team/department.
- ‘web 2.0 tools’ – techie blogs for the company/department, dedicated twitter account of team leader, wiki’s and stuff like that.
Any further ideas? What techniques do you use (or did you) in your company? How would you encourage developers to share the knowledge between themselves?
Trust.
You are allowed to ‘seem stupid’, but please ask if you don’t know, or don’t fully understand what I’m saying. And please tell me if I’m wrong (I didn’t realize it because I’m equally stupid.)