Have you ever been in a situation where you were asked to do something but the instructions felt kind of vague? Then you tried to do it but ended up failing? Well, one of the agile principles reminds us that the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face to face conversation. We decided to put this to the test. We invited three people to try their very best to create an origami snapper. The catch was that we didn't show them what a snapper is and we limited our instructions to a simple written list. Let's see how they got on.

All three of them failed. It turns out that even clearly written instructions aren't always enough. Once we showed them what a snapper actually is, gave them instructions that included pictures and let them work together instead of alone, they created one quickly and easily. And this is really the point here; at work, it can be really easy to just fire off an e-mail or text, asking a colleague to do something, but this kind of communication isn't enough and will probably just end up with everyone being frustrated. Agile thinking tells us that rich communication and collaboration allows us to quickly and easily understand what we need to do, and how we need to do it.