Ishin Den Shin

This word originally comes from a Chinese proverb. In Japanese, it is pronounced "I Shin Den Shin".

It means that to communicate heart (or mind) with each other by means of their heart (or mind). In other words, to communicate with each other's mind without speaking any word.

The first two characters "I Shin" mean "by means of heart (mind)". The last two characters "Den Shin" mean "to communicate heart (or mind)".

-- MarcoAbis

CW means? Cunningham, Ward. Of course.

"Therefore, is frequently used to express CW's fantastic potential." refers to anything related with our vision of the subject. I think it is something like "Cable & Wireless" :) I took this description from a Japanese site about radio amateurs and forgot to remove that sentence. -- MarcoAbis

Of course! . . . But I think I'll run with "Continuous Wave".

ok :) However, I think this is a perfect analogy for the issue of teaching/knowledge transferring of Agile principles and practices. Something like "from me to you directly" and "living it together". We can teach practices but not impose principles which need to be shared between the "teacher" and the "taught": the taught need to discover them guided by the teacher. This is the common path used in martial arts to transfer that implicit knowledge and experience you cannot transfer in other ways (you can but you will lose the essence). Am I wrong? -- MarcoAbis

While you have got a nice literal translation of Ishin-Denshin... a less obtuse way to talk about it is to speak of learning by doing with masters of doing. In the martial arts, this is practice. The communication is through the practice. In the hard dojos, this means a lot of getting thumped when you do something bad (see ShuHaRi for a bit on the good and bad vs right and wrong). Often we also speak of 'direct transmission' which is something that happens when you have been chosen as a deshi and have been practicing continuously for many many years with a master.

Ok all that aside. XP has one really clear example with potential to realize Ishin-Denshin... it's pair programming with an unbalanced pair. Apprentice and Master sharing the keyboard.

-- Ron Fox

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