One of the principals of Agile is making things visible at all times.
I have always been a proponent of getting the team to share a common understanding of the model, in an abstract way aswell as in the code. This can be particularly useful when you have multi-disciplinary teams (another agile precept), because having some representation of the software other than the code can help communication between different groups.
Another artifact of the design of a system is often screenshots or wireframes in internet applications.
We have recently taken to having a whiteboard which always has the current iterations’ main domain model drawn on it. It becomes a great place for having swift tech huddles and then writing down questions that arise. It becomes like a public representation of the model.
I realised today that it may also function as an alert mechanism – as people move to the board to make changes, other members of the team can see that somethign is being altered, the design process ITSELF is becomeing visible to the team and its easy to participate and keep informed.
A second thing we did is have the screenshots of what we are building live on the desk of the person responsible for coding the fornt end. Aswell as being the main consumer of the information I belive that this will mean that everyone goes to her to ask to see the desings which i hope will encourage spontaneous design decisions, again, making the design process visible.
Finally both of these activities are examples of DEVOLUTION of authority. Rather than the Tech / Team lead being the focus of this information and constantly responding to questions, they should become the guardian of the process which devolves the power. If everything is always visible theres no need to keep track of everything because its happening all around you all the time.
Main points:
Make the design ARTIFACTS highly visible
Make the design PROCESS visible
Encourage SPONTANEOUS design interactions
Encourage DEVOLUTION of the process from a central authority to the team
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