The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

Informative Workspace

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Whole Team

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Your workspace is the cockpit of your development effort. Just as a pilot surrounds themselves with information necessary to fly a plane, use an informative workspace to surround team members with information necessary to steer their work.

An informative workspace broadcasts information into the team room. On in-person teams, when people take a break, they’ll sometimes wander around and stare at the information surrounding them. That brief zone-out can result in an “aha” moment of discovery.

On remote teams, it’s harder to get the same “always visible” effect, but the same principles apply. Create opportunities for people to absorb information without having to consciously seek it out.

An informative workspace also allows people to sense the team’s progress just by walking into the room—or logging in, in the case of a virtual team room. It conveys status information without interrupting team members and helps improve stakeholder trust.

Subtle Cues

The essence of an informative workspace is information. An informative workspace constantly broadcasts information to the team. This takes the form of “big visible charts,” as described next, but it also takes the form of subtle cues that allow team members to maintain their situational awareness.

One source of situational awareness is seeing what people are doing. In a physical team room, if someone’s changing the visual plan, they’re probably thinking about ...