Storytelling in interaction: Agility in practice

Abstract

One of the stated beliefs common to practitioners of all the agile methodologies is that "the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation." This view is pervasive throughout Agile Systems techniques and approaches. There is starting to be some interest and in-depth investigation into the nature of programmer interaction and dialogue within the case of pair-programming [2] as well as larger scale ethnographic studies of XP practice [10]. Although interesting metaphoric features have already been found in the language of expert software developers [12] [8] [7], more detailed qualitative analysis can also be made into the nature of such communication. Narrative analysis [9] is an in-depth qualitative analysis methodology, and focuses on the ways in which people make and use stories to interpret the world. Storytelling and its role for communicating social tacit knowledge and historical and organisational identity is well recognised [4]. So far there are fairly few cases where narrative analysis has been applied to Information Systems (an analysis of these are given in Wagner [11]), but it is beginning to find popularity within the information systems community as it has proved particularly useful when considering tacit knowledge transfer and related communication issues, especially during periods of organisational change [1] [5]. Narratives are considered to be social products within specific contexts, and an interpretive device through which people communicate knowledge and define their own identity. It is arguable that the most basic and prevalent form of narrative arises as the product of ordinary conversation [6]. As Gregori-Signes [3] points out "We tell stories to each other as a means of packaging experience in cognitively and effectively coherent ways, or [...] as a way to test the borderlines between the exceptional and the ordinary." Conversational stories are "negotiable and collaboratively developed between more than one speaker although one speaker usually has a predominant role." A pilot study, incorporating narrative interviews supported by observational data, of a small software development company in the South of England has recently been conducted. Preliminary analysis supports the view that this qualitative technique, when further applied to the community of Agile Systems developers, will provide potentially interesting results. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.