Dear Garmin,
I recently traveled out of town on business. We flew a commercial airline to our destination, however I packed my Garmin Nuvi to make getting around easier for us once we arrived. On a similar recent trip we joked about the fact that a few of us owned GPS devices but that none of us thought to bring it.
When we loaded into the rental car I announced that I had remembered to bring my GPS with me. A few of my traveling companions did not trust the Nuvi to the same degree that I trusted it. They insisted on double checking the directions calculated by the Nuvi against the paper directions they brought with them.
The Nuvi performed flawlessly when we asked it to take us to the hotel, to our business meetings and to a restaurant near the hotel. However, on the return trip to the airport we needed to stop to refill the gas tank in the rental car. When we exited the highway I asked the Nuvi to find the closest gas station. Since we took the exit for the rental car return I expected the Nuvi to find one or more gas stations very nearby. The Nuvi churned for a minute and then presented me with a list of gas stations within 3 miles of our current location. I blindly selected the first gas station on the list. By default the Nuvi displays the closest item in the list first.
Following the Nuvi's directions we began to head down a steep, windy and seemingly single lane road. When the Nuvi voice instructed me to turn left at a street whose name included the word "Ferry" my heart sank from concern and embarrassment. I wondered, "Surely, the Nuvi would not instruct me to cross a river via a ferry to find a gas station, would it?" As we approached "Ferry Rd." my fear turned into my reality. There to our left floated the ferry dock in all of its "rickety glory". The Nuvi voice instructed us to "board the ferry". My boss and the 2 other passengers groaned in chorus. I wanted to stop the car and jump in the river to escape the embarrassment. Instead I calmly pulled over and spent a few minutes using the Nuvi to find another gas station on our side of the river.
Garmin, please, make ferry boats an avoidance option which defaults to "Avoid" out of the box. I promise that 99.5% of the population will agree with me that they would rather NOT take a ferry to get gas, all other things being equal.
This little lesson taught me to take all of the directions that I get from the Nuvi with a healthy dose of skepticism, especially when I am in a new or unfamiliar city. No longer will I hit the "Go" button without viewing the route to ensure that it meets with my expectations.
Respectfully,
John Sextro
The lack of propinquity could be killing your project and you don't even know it. Propinquity is a "silent" killer. In order to prevent the death of your project you must first understand propinquity.
Miriam-Webster defines propinquity as
"nearness in place or time". In social psychology the theory of "The Propinquity Effect" asserts that there "is a tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often". Similarly, in 1966 anthropologist Edward T. Hall introduced the concept of "Proxemics" to describe set measurable distances between people as they interact. E.T. Hall hypothesized that, "The influence of two people on each other is inversely proportional not only to the square of their distance but possibly even the cube of the distance between them."
As it relates to this discussion, I define propinquity as the nearness of the critical members of a project team. I assert to you that project success rates increase as the propinquity (or nearness) of the critical members increases. For instance, a project whose team members work in different buildings in an office park or campus will fail more often than a team whose members work in the same building. Even further a project whose team members all work within 200 sq. feet of each other will succeed more often than a team whose members work scattered throughout a 10,000 sq. foot work area.
In an era of seemingly constant communication among workers via email, instant messenger, text messaging and Twitter you might find it hard to imagine that propinquity plays such a vital role in the success of projects. Many people refuse to accept the hard truth, that these forms of communication poorly substitute for the face-to-face, human-to-human interaction that organically happens when high levels of propinquity exist. Have you ever had a cube neighbor that worked in a different group, but with whom you had a friendship, that moved to another area down the hall, another floor or maybe even another building? How often do you talk to this person today? You were once close, why don't you talk with this person anymore? The reason, lack of propinquity.
It is not that you are too lazy to to pop open a chat window, write an email, walk down the hall, traverse the steps or wait for the elevator...ok maybe it is laziness. Whatever it is, this inhibiting factor is in all of us. By the way, how much do you talk to the new person that moved into your friend's cubicle (or work area)? Scary isn't it?
It is no wonder then that the agile software development methodologies prescribe co-location for all critical team members as a core principle. The creators of the agile methodologies knew, either consciously or subconsciously, of the critical link between propinquity and success in software development. Throughout my 7+ years of practicing Scrum and Extreme Programming I insisted and made certain that my team sat in a contiguous block of cubicles or, preferably, in a team/project room. As a testament to propinquity and agile methodologies stands a track record of success and high customer satisfaction for each of these projects during this 7+ year period. By way of hindsight I can clearly see all of the positive effects that propinquity bestowed onto these projects. In contrast, I can also imagine all of the problems and issues that we might have faced in the absence of propinquity.
If you feel that your project suffers from problems with communication, team spirit, shared vision, or productivity then move the team into a team/project room. Even if the team already sits in close proximity to each other, move them into the room. It will amaze you how much of a difference you will see just by removing a barrier as small as a cubicle wall.
