Mock-up or a thousand words?
In software development, we used to not have to talk to each other a great deal. Communication was one-way, top-down, from phase to phase. Today in Kuadriga, we are using agile development methodologies to help clients respond faster to constraints and opportunities in the environment. Agile development without agile communications will not be agile. We encourage the use of graphical mock-ups to communicate ideas and concepts in a visual manner.
Roman legionnaires had their orders shouted at them. Top-down. They did not need to talk a great deal to each other. The plan was handed down, pre-written and rigid.
Team members in agile development are more like of commando soldiers fighting through the bush towards shared objectives. Within the team, commandos need to know the position and direction of each other. And this is in effect the purpose of daily stand-up meetings supported by shared tools for task management and code repository.
Agile emphasises direct communications over written documentation. But we still need to agree where we are going. With the product owner and between each other. Aside from standard use-case descriptions, we use visual tools in the communication in-side and out-side the team whenever possible.The way, we implement Scrum in Kuadriga, the client product owner and the team set direction frequently to ensure that all are on the same page. The mock-up is an important tool in this. Initially, it shows only the raw functionality of a user interface and is not very "pretty". What is important is the discussion with end-users that the mock-up will support. To ensure that we are all on the same path.
As usual, having the right tools is half the work. One of our favorites is Balsamiq – it makes it easy to try out new functional designs and UI features - without coding.