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by Sam Gentile.
Original Post: Our Agile War Room
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Ever since the mid-90's we have been talking about the concept of Whole Team in Extreme Programming; the notion that the whole team sits together in one room and works together. Recently the concept of War Rooms in Agile have become the term. Brain Button talks about the Power of the War Room in the PAG group that Peter, Brad and Scott are in developing CAB and EntLib and the struggles with management to get it. Teams of workers that labored together for several months in specially designed "war rooms" were twice as productive as their counterparts working in traditional office arrangements, a study by University of Michigan researchers has found. It would look something like this.
How do you do this? You just do it. A couple of weeks ago ago our Agile team noticed that it was hard for us to Pair Program. The desks were too long and we couldn't get our chairs around them. Although we were in the same “war room” and area, we were not optimal. So we did what Extreme Programming has suggested. Without asking anyone, out came the socket wrenches on the spot. Our team took apart all our desks so they were 1/2 size and faced each other; 2 desks on each side for our 4 people. It is now a simple matter for any of us to swing over and pair. This also facilitates what Alistair Coburn calls “Osmotic Communication.” Osmotic communication means that information flows into the background hearing of members of the team, so that they pick up relevant information as though by osmosis. This is normally accomplished by seating them in the same room. This simple act has made a huge difference in our communications. It's now trivial to ask each other a question, have design discussions, have our morning Standup Meetings. pick up information flows, and most importantly for us to pair. Of course, in order to do this, we had to totally get over all the ego-driven stuff that most of us have developed for decades in sofware: having our own offices with our headphones on.
Don't stand for what maangement says your space should be. Make your space be a shared space that fosters teamwork and collaboration for the whole team. Break down the barriers, literally. Do whatever this takes. And since I can't say it any better, I'll close with getting on the bandwagon with Brian Button, “We have to take it upon ourselves to educate them. We have to speak up about how war rooms help us do our job better. We have to write articles, we have to invite our bosses into our war rooms, we have to blog about our experiences. We have to get the word out, so that our bosses will begin to offer us the open workspace that we crave so badly. The fault is not theirs — the fault is ours. It is we who have changed, in our work habits, in our space desires. We have to communicate that to the world at large so that they will learn that programmers have emerged from their cocoons cubicles and are ready to work together.”
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