Why does agile "feel" good?

Working on agile projects feels really good. Delivering regularly, writing lots of tests, integrating hourly, interacting with the customer. These are all truly gratifying activities from both professional and personal perspectives. But there's something more to this. Just standing in a agile project space, looking at the walls feels really good. Why? After think about this for a while I have finally formed a theory. To be honest my subconscious has been throwing me plenty of clues, I just haven't known what to make of them.

At school from age four to twelve, everything we did went up on the wall. The pictures we drew, projects we took part in, the words we need to learn. Everything important got stuck up one way or another. Regularly we refreshed the walls with new, important information. The wall was a source of learning, activity and history.

For weeks now, my mind has been flooded with images of childhood information radiators. I can clearly see the birds nest on the nature table, my paintings over the door, the index cards of "big words" on the wall. These images remind me of happy, productive times where learning was spontaneous - you just looked at the wall for information.

Further than happy childhood memories though, people have been drawing on walls since the dawn of time. Agile project spaces "feel" good because this is how we have presented, communicated and retained crucial information for eons. If it's important draw it on the wall and share it with other people.

(You can also send it "straight to the pool room" if it’s truly significant: The Castle :-)