Quotes About Understanding

Stories aren't a written form of requirements; telling stories through collaboration with words and pictures is a mechanism that builds shared understanding. Stories aren't the requirements; they're discussions about solving problems for our organization, our customers, and our users that lead to agreements on what to build. Your job isn't to build more software faster: it's to maximize the outcome and impact you get from what you choose to build.

If you're not getting together to have rich discussions about your stories, then you're not really using stories.

the real value of stories isn't what's written down on the card. It comes from what we learn when we tell the story.

We can both read the same document, but have a different understanding of it.

Scope doesn't creep; understanding grows.

She looked at me like I was stupid and said to me one last time with an air of finality, "They're requirements." It was at that moment that I learned that the word requirements actually means shut up. For a great many people, that's exactly what requirements do. They stop conversations about people and the problems we're solving. The truth is, if you build a fraction of what's required you can still make people very happy.

Shared understanding is when we both understand what the other person is imagining and why.

The real goal of using stories is shared understanding.

People who only consider current thought gain information at the expense of wisdom.

And so, pointing fingers become pointing guns, because nobody listens to fingers.

Quick words did not always mean a quick mind.

The heavy round face was looking at him, the hard look of a man who had also understood, who had seen all the stupidity, who knew, after all, that the gold stars were often mindless decoration, that the army was led not by symbols, but by the fallible egos and blind fantasies of men.

Meade looked at Grant, and Grant turned, moved toward his tent, said quietly, "General, a moment, if you please Ã¢â'¬Â¦

Don't we want more than anything to make something that reflects who we are and how we feel honestly enough that someone else might feel seen or acknowledged, and less alone?

Some things you can be so close to that you never grasp their true nature.

People who asked questions didn't necessary like being asked questions.

In unusual situations there can be a comfort in the presence of even someone you think might be your enemy.

A whale can injure another whale with its sonar. A whale can speak to another whale across sixty miles of ocean. A whale is as intelligent as we are, just in a way we can't quite measure or understand. Because we're these incredibly blunt instruments.

What was true empathy anyway but sometimes turning away, leaving someone alone?

Was he the woman with no clue where the ant was or the ant, unaware it was on the woman?

Perhaps only I could truly make Wick a person, by forgiving him, and if I forgave him, if I showed I forgave him, then maybe we could be people together.

The stories he told became boring to me through repetition, but I understand now that he was just trying to fix that place with the compass of his memories.

Observation had always meant more to me than interaction.

Sometimes insight into character and dialogue means being silent.