One of the first things we thought we knew about the way we wanted to employ agile methods* was that our team should nearly always be on-site with the customer or stakeholder to facilitate communication most effectively.

With several projects now under our belts - projects where we were on-site full-time and others where we were never on site - we have found that the optimal place to be is somewhere in the middle.

For some clients the temptation to communicate too much is overpowering. Wanting to discuss something turns into calling a meeting, turns into inviting everyone - all in the name of effective communication. While there are certainly times when it is bet to have everyone in the room, those times don’t occur daily or even weekly in most cases. On those projects where our time with the client was constrained we found that we were more efficient. We didn’t have meetings to make us comfortable, we had them to answer questions, set direction, and knock down hurdles.

In the future, I think we are going to try to set-up false constraints to help minimize meetings and require that the meeting “prove itself” even before it has been scheduled. Damn those 37signals kids if they aren’t right again!

* You probably won’t see me use the big “A” agile much as I don’t really believe in that