Get Seated for Agile - Free Infographic

There is an increasing trend in Sweden to move in to something commonly called Activity Based Seating, what we discovered is often confused with Flexible Seating. We couldn’t find any data on the actual impact of these kind of seatings for Agile Teams. Thats why we did a survey to uncover the “truth” with 177 people answering and an open space session to learn more about what learnings are out there from people working Agile.

The Free Infographic Poster on Agile Seating

Download the Free Infographic – get Seated for Agile here (High resolution PDF) >

Buy printed A1 poster >

The survey was presented at Agila Sverige 2018 and can be found here > At an Open Space session we got together to share experiences people had around ABS. The result of both is shared in this free infographic and we hope this information can bring value to you and your organization so that you can find better solutions together. Please feel free to use the content in any way you like. We would though be happy if you would refer to Dandy People if you take any content out of context. Thank you every one for joining in and sharing your learnings from the trenches of Flexible Seating and really great Activity Based Seating!

In this series of posts you’ll find:

– Free Infographic (your on the right place)
– The Free Report
– Free PP slides of the report
– Video of me presenting the report (Swedish)

Activity Based Seating vs Flexible Seating

Activity Based Seating

Flow optimized, aligned with Lean & Agile thinking.
If there are Agile Teams, one activity the office is optimized for is Agile Teamwork.
More desks than people to optimize for flow.
Can be re-arranged quickly for new team members or team collaboration.
The goal is high performance teams.

Flexible Seating

Resource optimization, against Lean & Agile thinking.
No personal desks, fewer seats than employees, clean desk & wall policy.
Optimized for individual work, not team work.
Many organizations say they do ABS, but it is in fact FS.
The organization is “blind” and teamwork is banned.
The goal is to save space, and money, but deliveries from teams will fail and stress will increase.

The Optimal Seating for an Agile Team

Shared Learnings

Have more seats than team members to enable collaboration with people outside of the team.
Get teams their own Home Zones for min. 6 months.
Let the teams decide how they want their Home Zone.
Have few rules, and don’t punish everyone if someone can’t follow them.
If teams can move around, it makes it easy to get team seated next to each other if close collaboration is needed – and they can easily self organize.
The problems you think you will get, are not what will trouble you in the end, so think of it as a starting point, not the end solution, always improve.
Make sure to optimize for the type of activity the organization will have, team zones, quiet rooms, conference call rooms, workshop areas etc.
It’s important that people feel they can influence their situation or they will get demotivated & stressed.
Invest in really good digital tools for visualization and collaboration if you want the teams to be able to move around.
Get both monitors and white boards on wheels if you want the teams to be able to move around as a team.
Show this to your Manager or the HR department, and ask them to involve people with Agile Mindset in the process to ensure securing delivery.

The truth – numbers from the survey – 1 Positive and 9 Negative

What we learned about how Flexible Seating affect our ability to do a good job

Is it a Success or Failure?

Saved $ on space shows instantly, but decreasing deliveries and quality as well as stressed employees takes about 6-9 months.

The True Purpose is Important

The positive examples of ABS we’ve see has been made from other reasons then savings. If you are doing Flexible Seating to save money, be open and clear about that. Don’t make excuses to try to convince people otherwise.

Download the Free Infographic – get Seated for Agile here (High resolution PDF) >

This is a poster in the Agile Explained series from Dandy People

Here you find all Free Agile posters in the Agile Explained series >

Interested in translating this poster to other languages than English? Please let me know and I´ll help you get started and publish you poster here on the blog among the other translations as well.

See the other posts in this series:

“The Agile Activity Based Seating Report 2018 (or rather Flexible Seating) – Free Slides” – The full report as PDF and slide share.
Video of my talk “Aktivitetsbaserade kontor + Agile = Superbra! Eller? “– Video from Agila Sverige May 2018 (Swedish) where I present the report.
The first post that started the Series – “Flexibility in Agile and Activity based offices must be a perfect fit” – or does it?

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