AoAD2 Practice: Informative Workspace

This is an excerpt from The Art of Agile Development, Second Edition. Visit the Second Edition home page for additional excerpts and more!

This excerpt is copyright 2007, 2021 by James Shore and Shane Warden. Although you are welcome to share this link, do not distribute or republish the content without James Shore’s express written permission.

Informative Workspace

Audience
Whole Team

We’re tuned in to our progress.

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.

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In this Section

  1. Informative Workspace
    1. Subtle Cues
    2. Big Visible Charts
    3. Improvement Charts
    4. Gaming
    5. Questions
    6. Prerequisites
    7. Indicators
    8. Alternatives and Experiments
    9. Further Reading

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