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 can expect regular meetings throughout the day, often around a physical team wall or a shared digital board with notes and reference materials. This may seem strange if you’re 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 working environment
Your working environment includes both your physical space and the digital tools you use. It’s just as important as the choice of programming language or project management tools.
Working together
Ideally, your team will be able to collaborate easily, whether you’re co-located, fully remote or hybrid.
Short, informal conversations are an important way to test assumptions and solve problems quickly.
When you’re not in the same place, you can create opportunities for these conversations through digital tools and regular check-ins.
Adapting your environment
Small changes to your setup can make collaboration easier.
In an office, removing barriers between desks can encourage conversation. Make sure screens or equipment do not prevent people from working together comfortably.
If you work remotely, think about your digital setup. Clear naming conventions, shared folders and agreed ways of working can make a big difference.
Shared visual workspace
Teams using agile approaches need a shared visual workspace. This might be a physical wall in your office or a digital board your team can access from anywhere.
Your workspace should show your work clearly and create a shared focus so the team can:
- use it during daily stand-ups (in person or online)
- 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
Regular meetings such as standups or retrospectives help teams stay aligned.
You’ll also need a tool for day-to-day online discussions.
An online communication tool such as Slack or Microsoft Teams helps your team to:
- make quick decisions
- provide support and information
- keep everyone informed about your work
These tools allow more conversational communication than email and reduce long email backlogs. They also enable teams to stay connected, regardless of location.
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.
Using shared editing tools also helps you avoid multiple versions of the same document. Examples include Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Confluence and Basecamp.
Managing your backlog
You might find an online board helps you to manage your backlog.
Online boards such as Trello, Jira or Asana allow you to:
- add detailed information to backlog items (such as draft designs)
- link to related discussions
- keep work visible to everyone, wherever they’re working
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:
Updates to this page
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We’ve updated this guidance to make it clearer, more inclusive and more reflective of how agile teams work. These changes replace location-dependent advice with guidance that applies to co-located, remote and hybrid teams. We've also removed outdated examples of tools that no longer exist.
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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