Dedicated rooms for project teams are becoming a more common work arrangement in a variety of organizations. The aim is to locate everyone on the team in a space where the team members and their work products are visible to one another. Team rooms are a recommended feature for agile projects. The team room concept is also making its way onto university campuses as professional schools and academic libraries have added them to the amenities available to students.
A good example of a team room configured to support team learning and progress is shared by Jake Knapp who explains how Google Ventures configures what it calls a War Room (Americans seem to love using war in all sorts of applications.) to support collaborative work. One goal is to create plenty of space and opportunities for work progress and products to be shared by all members of the group. Using physical space to set out project work to aid memory, allow for manipulation of ideas, and create shared understanding are key dimensions of the War Room.
Knapp provides guidance on how to create a project space under different circumstances. Although he makes it seem easy to create spaces to support design sprints and other project work, there are challenges involved in realizing the optimum conditions for productive work. Check out Death by Team Room for a discussion of the ways in which efforts to create team rooms can go very wrong.
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