Co-Located Teams

Contents 1 Overview 2 Importance 3 PMI-ACP Exam Outline Reference 4 Body 5 History 6 Current practice 7 See also 8 Sources & Reference 9 External Links

Overview

Co-Located Teams are teams comprised of members that work at the same geographical location, preferrably in the same building, under optimal circumstances in the same room (team space). The less barriers for immediate flow of information are existing the better.

Importance

PMI-ACP Exam Outline Reference

Tools and Techniques > Communication

Body

Co-Located teams are highly preferred and recommended in Agile. It is considered the best setup for a co-located team to be working in the same room where work desks are configured in an open way that presents no barriers for visual or verbal communication. Walls, cubical walls or other seperators are not recommended, since they might mark "private space" and present a barrier for other team members. Osmotic communication between team members becomes harder and requires mor efforts with every form of seperation introduced into the team work space, team members might be less likely to engage in the team efforts, if they can withdraw into a space not visible to all other team members and they might miss important information not being able to follow conversation. Visual clues, such as facial or bodily expressions of team members might be ovelooked and escalate into conflicts when non-verbally expressed frustration, stress etc. won't be addressed in time. Pair Programming is for example one of the Agile techniques that will thrive in an open co-located environment.

History

Though teams in the past usually have been co-located in the same office complex or building, team members often kept their office space and location while they were collaborating on a project. Team members would meet in a common space to communicate status and discuss issues. Agile methodologies heavily rely on short and frequent feedback loops and team members increasingly would find themselves more often in the meeting location than at their usual work places, since change was now encouraged and happened more frequently and needed to be communicated.

With the market place becoming more and more global the ability of geographically co-locate team members has encountered new challenges which are usually addressed with technology, such as video conferencing for example providing virtual co-location of some kind.

Co-location of teams improves productivity as well as team building. In our organization, we have not only implemented Co-location at the team level, we are implementing Co-location of leadership team as well. It promotes more collaboration and better communication.

Current practice

See also

Sources & Reference

External Links

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