In this week's podcast, Barry Burd talks with Wendy Closson. With over a decade of experience immersed in development and championing agile practices, Closson coaches technology leaders to manage effectively, respond reasonably, and navigate the choppy waters of business. Closson's presentation at QCon New York was entitled Syntactic Sugar for English: Pragmatic Eloquence.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Software is a very abstract experience, so it can be difficult to communicate ideas about software to people outside.

- The majority of people in teams want to remain in their comfort zone, so don't want to change.

- Many problems that may seem technical in nature have to do with outside experiences.

- The algorithmic approach to communicating has to do with creating new habits around our speaking.

- With a single word you can elevate a population or destroy a friendship.

- Simplicity is divinity, where someone can look at your code and understand your intentions, and the same in real-life communication.

- Compromise isn't always the best thing. If no one's really feeling passionate about it, that's not going to create the best code.

Notes and links can be found on http://bit.ly/29Co4X2

How Understanding Developers Helps Coaching

1:20 - Software is a very abstract experience. It doesn't really live in the physical word, so it can be difficult to communicate ideas about software - using it or creating it - to people outside the software world.

1:58 - It's possible to manage without direct experience... When you think of your job as a service leadership job. It's your job to facilitate, to trust, to understand what people are saying. But without the background, that trust can be hard to keep; a lot of things can get lost in translation.

More on this:

Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ. http://bit.ly/29Co4X2

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