Creating an agile working environment
Things move quickly in agile, so digital teams need easy ways to coordinate their activities, communicate progress and collaborate.
You should design your physical working environment and choose suitable technology to encourage agile ways of working.
What an agile environment looks like
You should expect to see lots of short meetings throughout each day, often around walls covered in notes or reference material. This may seem strange in office cultures that are more used to formal meetings or conference calls.
Those working in creative and technical fields often need plenty of space for focused, detailed work. It’s common to see people spend most of the day with headphones on to help them focus, or deep in conversation with just one person with whom they’re pairing.
Decide what you need from your environment
Working spaces for digital projects will vary. At the beginning of a project, decide with your team:
- how to structure your space
- the tools you need
Your physical environment
The space a team works in is a tool. It’s just as important as the choice of programming language or project management tools.
Sitting together
Ideally, your team will work from the same location and sit together.
Short, informal conversations are an important way to test assumptions. These are much harder when a team is spread across an office or in different buildings.
Hacking the environment
Removing dividers between desks makes a big difference and allows conversation between the team to flow more freely. If large monitors are getting in the way, remove them.
You might also want to think about getting a desk organiser.
This process is known as ‘hacking the environment’.
Wall space
Teams using agile approaches need wall space in their work area. If you can’t use a wall, you could try whiteboards or windows.
You need sticky notes or cards and blu-tack to post records of your work on the walls.
The wall creates a physical focus for the team so they can:
- gather round it at their daily standup
- refer to and update it during the day
- show the status of their work to anyone outside of the team
This helps the team to:
- discuss what they’re working on
- sort out problems
- talk through ideas
This is called ‘visual management’.
Find out how to set up your team wall.
The right technology
As a team, you also need online tools to help you communicate and manage your work.
Individual members of the team may also need access to tools to help them with their role (for example, your user researcher may need access to video editing software).
You should check if anyone needs training to use the tools you choose.
Online communication
Meetings like standups or retrospectives help people to keep in touch but you also need a tool for online discussions.
An online tool helps the team to stay in contact and means you can:
- make quick decisions
- provide support and information
- keep everyone informed about the work you’re doing
The Government Digital Service (GDS) uses Slack, the Environment Agency uses Yammer, the NHS uses Microsoft Teams and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) uses Hipchat.
These tools work like chatrooms and allow your team to talk in a more conversational way than they would with emails.
They stop large backlogs of emails building up for people who are out of the office and allow the team to communicate even if they’re not in the same room.
Collaboration
You must have a browser-based editing tool so your team can work on the same documents at the same time.
This is a mandatory open standard requirement for government.
It also helps you avoid having multiple versions of the same document. GDS, MoJ and many other departments use Google Drive.
GDS and MoJ also use collaboration tools like Confluence for internal wikis, while GDS uses Basecamp for cross-government communities.
Managing your backlog
You might find an online board helps you to manage your backlog, in addition to your physical wall.
Online boards allow you to record further detail behind backlog items (like draft designs) and to link to discussions on collaboration tools.
Teams at GDS use Trello. HMRC, Home Office and MoJ use JIRA.
Visit agile working environments
If you’re setting up an agile working environment for your team, you might find it useful to go and look at how other agile teams are working.
Get in touch with the agile delivery community to arrange a tour.
Related guides
You may also find the following guides useful:
- Last update:
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Added details of collaborative tools, including Trello, Slack, Basecamp, Yammer, Hipchat, Confluence, and Google Drive.
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Guidance first published