Sharing tribal knowledge in N easy steps!

Fun for the whole team! You'll need:

• a decent spectrum of junior and senior team members
• a whiteboard
• markers

These sessions can last for about an hour at a time, weekly or biweekly.

1. Prepare the discussion by having two seniors discuss a design detail for a contemporary change to the system.
2. Write the domain-specific terms on the whiteboard as they come up.
3. When there's a good amount of terms on the whiteboard, go around the room from the newest to most tenured member of the group. Everyone takes a turn explaining as many terms as he can as accurately as he can. The next person may correct or augment the explanations of previous explanators before tackling terms that have not yet been discussed.

Try this when you have an influx of new teammates or just as an occasional refresher to keep everyone on the same page. These discussions have a way of fitting their groups like a glove. Open question: Does this work with teaching new games to board game groups?