'''Forces:'''

	* You want information about your project to be shared amongst team members
	* You don't want written documentation (see ProblemsWithDocumentation)

'''Technique:''' Share information orally.  Establish a culture in which people communicate frequently and are willing to ask others to explain things.

'''Resulting Forces:'''

	* All members of the team must have regular contact with each other.
	* Newcomers will require a lot of individual help to get up to speed.
	* The information won't survive if the entire team leaves.
	* This technique may only work when everybody works in the same room.  My successes with it seem to have been partly because people could easily overhear others' conversations.  I haven't pushed the limits and seen where it fails, though.  --JimLittle

'''Known Uses:'''

	* ExtremeProgramming projects

'''Related Patterns:'''

	* PairProgramming
	* DocumentLast
	* AutomateProcesses

'''Concerns:'''

	* Oral explanation can be difficult for some people, physically or psychologically.  Some people simply can't explain things well, or have a severe speech impediment.
	* In a socially broken environment, people may hoard important information that they'd otherwise be forced to write down.
	* Oral storytelling requires that the story be re-told many times, which can introduce error, while a physical document needs to be written only once, and can be refactored.  The oral tradition might be compared with requiring each person who edits a Wiki page to re-write the entire page from memory every time they edit it.
	* The team may have difficulty migrating to the oral tradition due to the oral tradition's lack of defined process.  This is not a problem with the oral tradition itself, but it is a factor in its adoption.
	* Oral explanation requires at least 2 people who must be in constant contact, and most shops have enough deadline crunches that this can be difficult to arrange

'''Alternatives'''

	* Use a ProjectWiki or TeamWiki to capture information that would otherwise be OralTradition.  This addresses several of the resulting forces and concerns above:
		* Newcomers can use it to get up to speed without requiring such a lot of individual help.
		* The information will survive if the entire team leaves.
		* This technique can work when everybody doesn't work in the same room (or the same time zone). (See discussion at TeamWiki.)
		* Explanation does not require 2 people to be in constant contact: a question can be posed, the explanation Wiki'd, and the Wiki page read, at separate times.

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CategoryProcessPattern