Recently, I’ve been trying to convince my colleagues to make more use of wikis and forums, rather than writing word documents and having face to face convesions about them.

This, perhaps not surprisingly, has met with a range of reactions from amusement to confusion to derision!

Why the hell, people want to know, are you engaged in a heated debate (read flame war) on the forums, with the bloke who sits next to you?

Lest you get the wrong idea, let me say quite categorically that I’m all for face to face interaction - in fact I reckon we could do with a bit more of it on my current project.

The problem with face to face, though (at least until technology catches up with us) is that there is no permanent record of what was said. Making a decision is all very well in the here and now, but what happens in six months time when we are sitting round scratching our heads and asking ‘how the hell did we get here?’. What happens when I get run over by a bus and some other poor sod has to pick up where I left off?

Yes I can look at the design document (we do have such things!), but most of the time it represents the start of the discussion, not the end. The design usually sparks a conversation, or a gradual process of discovery, and that’s what I want to capture.

I really think that wikis and forums can help. Wikis, because they lower the barrier to revision of the design documents, so that there is more chance that the current design document reflects the reality of the project. Forums, because they record that all important discussion and the decisions that got us to where we are.

Yes using such systems can be a pain in the arse, and yes it can often be easier to have a one minute face-to-face convesation. It’s also easier to hack the code, not bother with design, and ignore the coding standards. Good coders, however, eventually learn the true value of such easy fixes!