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Agile working; the implementation

Agile working: the Internet is full of reports about this popular concept. Many coaches offer their services to support organisations in ‘Scrumming’. But we miss one simple question: how do you adapt your office to Agile working? We visited De Agile Kantoorinrichters and talked to Anneline van der Zon.

Can any company or department introduce Agile working?

Is there an ideal Agile floorplan?

An online search for the term Agile working immediately produces photos of whiteboards and sticky notes. Why is that?

Visualisation is very important when you embark on agile working. Constantly surrounding yourself with information. Say you arrive in the morning, put down your bag, have a chat, get a coffee and turn on your computer. If you’ve saved the status of a project on your computer, you’ll only see that in the last step. However, if the status is easy to see on a whiteboard, you’ll be absorbing the project information from the moment you come in. Transparency also plays a role here. Everyone (managers and other colleagues) can follow the project without having to open a programme.

Can any company or department introduce Agile working?

Agile initially started in the IT sector, and was aimed at developing software as efficiently as possible. Now this philosophy is used in many sectors and in many disciplines. Agile is particularly useful in projects which are difficult to predict and that is very common. Often it starts small. The best thing to do is start agile working as a team before involving the whole organisation. The latter often requires a significant cultural change. The management team must support it. It’s essential to adapt the working environment to Agile working.

Is there an ideal Agile floorplan?

Adapting your business for Agile working is custom work and depends on the layout, the Agile teams and how the organisation implements Agile principles. There’s no set format for an Agile interior.

A few examples:

  1. In some organisations, the Agile teams hold ceremonies in separate rooms, also called a ‘scrum room’. That’s the room where you want to have as much writing space as possible so that a team can make so-called scrum sprints or brainstorm. One or more whole whiteboard walls are then ideal. Sometimes employees kneel on the floor or bring in steps to be able to use the whole space!
  2. In the team’s workplace, it’s ideal to have mobile boards so that the sprints can be updated, close to the team. Sometimes you want them to be movable, but that’s not always necessary. As long as they are visible to all the team members. Because they are intended to be so visible, these walls must also be eye catching in terms of design. A portable board can also be useful for moments when the team holds its Scrum ceremonies somewhere else.
  3. Then there are companies which have scrum team members working abroad. In that case, the combination with digital communication can be useful. Or you have organisations which want to work digitally for other reasons. The combination of writing and sticky notes is useful too; in practice this gives a positive vibe to teams and organisations. There’s nothing so satisfying as moving a task from ‘to do’ to ‘done’.

Customised wall + Acoustics

Mobile whiteboards

Digital + analogue

Article written by Teun Ten Bosch, Marketing Manager