Knowing that perfect communications are impossible relieves you of trying to reach that perfection. Instead, you learn to manage the incompleteness of communication. Rather than try to make the requirements document or the design model comprehensible to everyone, you stop when the document is sufficient to the purpose of the intended audience. "Managing the incompleteness of communications" is core to mastering agile software development.

After setting up the two questions, this chapter introduces the idea of operating at different levels of expertise. A novice listens differently than an expert does and asks for different guidance. This third section discusses the importance of understanding the listening levels of the people who are involved in the project.

The final section relates theabstract concepts to everyday life.

This is the most abstract chapter in the book. If you don't enjoy abstract topics, then skim it for now and return to it after reading some of the later, more concrete chapters.

The Problem with parsing experience

The Wine Label

A good guest, I gave the hostess my bottle of wine as I arrived, and I watched with curiosity as she put it into the refrigerator.

When she pulled it out at dinnertime, she said,

"This will go well with the fish."

"But that's red wine," I finally offered.

"It’s white," she said.

"It's red," I insisted, pointing to the label.

"Of course not. It's red. It says so right here..."

She started to read the label out loud.

"...Oh! It's red! Why did I put it into the refrigerator?"

We laughed and spent time recalling each attempt we had made to check our respective views of the "truth.

"How on earth, she asked, could she have looked at the bottle so many times and not noticed that it was a red wine?"