Recap: Agile Programming and Spatial Implications Roundtable

By Katie Boothroyd

Agile & Scrum is a method used in software development (originated in manufacturing) that focuses on rapid, iterative work cycles, and relies on collaboration, flexibility, and transparency more so than the traditional Waterfall method. More and more we’re seeing agile implementation with tech clients, as well as organizations with growing software components. Although the Manifesto for Agile Software Development defines the entire approach, and references such as the Agile Academy are easily accessible, we’ve noticed that each organization, and even teams within the same organization, practices only some of the methods. We set out to find out why…

DEGW partnered with Carbon 5 to host an Agile Roundtable with Real Estate/Facilities professionals and Agile Software Developers from a variety of companies, ranging from organizations as large as Yahoo! and SAP to as small as a sole proprietor and start-up from around the San Francisco Bay Area. The event was held at the Autodesk Gallery in SF, which was an excellent venue for our interactive half-day session.

Pop-Up Work in an On-Demand Economy

photo: Chris Doss Photography

By Pete Bacevice
Many cool things have been “popping up” lately in DEGW’s New York office.  After writing about “pop up businesses” and “organizational agility” in recent blog posts, we decided to get some first hand exposure to these trends by importing some if it to our space.

We partnered with Teknion to create a “pop-up” interactive zone in our space to serve as a gathering spot and focal point for our recent office open house.  With an RSVP list of nearly 100 people, we wanted to see how quickly our office could be transformed from a workplace to a social venue.  With only a few weeks of lead time, Teknion designed, shipped, and assembled a lounge seating system specifically for this event.  We are continuing to pilot this system for different events and uses, and we will post updates to this blog in the near future.

Working at Home, With Children

By Georgia Collins via the Huffington Post
Georgia Collins, managing director here at DEGW, North America, recently wrote about working at home, with children, for the Huffington Post. here is what she had to say:

Being a working mom is no longer an anomaly. The US Census reports that 61% of mothers with young children work full or part-time. I’m one of them and I will be the first to admit that my life is hectic. I feel like I never sit down. When I’m awake, I’m either focused on work or focused on my family. With the bits of time that remain I try to keep the laundry basket from overflowing and the refrigerator from being empty. I’ve given up on most everything else.

Like most people, I work from everywhere — the office, home, my (parked) car, the airport, the local coffee shop. Work is where I am, not a place that I go.

Volunteer Work and Collaboration

By Emily Golembiewski
Anybody who has worked with DEGW knows that we are very passionate about what we do – we get unnaturally excited about diagrams, we love talking to people about their work and workspaces, and frankly, we like the diversity of what we do and how we do it.

Which is why it should probably come as no surprise that several of us have extended this enthusiasm and found a few extra hours in the day to take on volunteer work. Volunteer work can be a great way to expand skills, contribute to the community, and provide team members with a sense of  purpose. It’s no coincidence that many of the companies on the Fortune ‘Top Places to Work’ list have volunteer programs.

Now to the fun part: what we’re working on.

Extra! Extra!

I know. I know. It’s been a while. But we have been busy here at DEGW working on lots of innovative and interesting projects, so we will have more to blog about soon! In the meantime, here are some links to what we are reading around here. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Designing a More Work-Friendly Workspace
Entrepreneur Magazine By Katherine Duncan
Groupthink
The New Yorker By Jonah Lehrer
Facebook’s ‘Cool Space’ Campus Points to Future of Office Growth
Bloomberg News By Dan Levy
The human factor in service design
McKinsey Quarterly By John DeVine, Shyam Lal, and Michael Zea
In Tech, Starting Up by Failing
New York Times By Jenna Wortham
Less Space, More Green
Building Operation Management By Casey Laughman
Check Out The Swanky, Brand New Office Of Seamless 
Business Insider By Daniel Goodman
X Marks the Spot- Columbia’s Studio-X, a think tank with labs all over the world, may be a new model for design education
Metropolis Magazine By Ian Volner
In Data Deluge, Multitaskers Go to Multiscreens
New York Times By Matt Richtel

The Changing Impact of Location in Workplace Premises Selection

By Dinesh Acharya
Recently I attended the CoreNet  event in New York that explored “The Talent Pool & Real Estate: How the Workforce Continues to Drive Location Decisions”. The following blog stems from that discussion:

In today’s knowledge economy and with new ways of working, workplace location can be as important as workplace facilities, if not more so. An issue from a tenant perspective are matters of cost, convenience, corporate image and resiliency in addition to meeting the preferences of the next generation of workers, many of who value their lifestyle options as highly as their career options.

Combined with the increasing competition for talent globally, many leading edge companies are using their location, workplace and corporate cultures as key tools in recruiting and retaining the right people.

Learning Space Toolkit: Your Input

By Jung Hoon Kim
The Learning Space Toolkit is an IMLS-funded project to develop a web-based collection of tools, references, and resources for planning, evaluating, and operating technology-rich informal learning spaces. The toolkit will enable campus administrators, space planners / designers, facility managers, and campus experts such as library and IT professionals to envision needs for space, technology, and services and then plan for how best to meet those needs.

We are conducting a brief survey of potential users to gather feedback on priorities for the tools we are planning to develop. The survey is organized by the six sections within the toolkit (Roadmap, Needs Assessment, Space Types, Services, Technology, and Assembly instructions), offering an opportunity to rate the importance of the content planned for each and let us know if anything is missing.

It will take approximately 10mins to complete and your input will be aggregated and anonymized, with your name/institution only used for response tracking purposes.

Take the survey here.

For more information about this project, please visit us at learningspacetoolkit.org

Hearting Whiteboards

By Bryant Rice
I love whiteboards. Of course I enjoy eliciting, prioritizing, editing thoughts from colleagues or outside groups, but I also enjoy reading them. I think whiteboards are the pictographs of modern life. Lascaux modernized.

Tools for Feedback and Transformation: Artifacts, Values, and Assumptions

By Paul Schuette
DEGW recently hosted a government roundtable in Washington D.C. It focused on Re-thinking Learning Environments: The Evolution of Education and Training in Government. It brought together federal government professionals to share and discuss innovations around where and how the federal workforce is learning and training today, and trends for tomorrow.

Re-Cap: DEGW’s Government Roundtable

By William Plunkett
DEGW recently hosted a roundtable event in Washington, D.C to discuss the changing nature of training, education, and learning in the public sector.  In a time when government agencies need to make every dollar go as far as possible, training programs are frequently at risk of being reduced or even eliminated.  Presenters and professionals from across the federal government were on hand to talk about how training is happening today and the trends for tomorrow.

• How can we leverage cross-agency collaboration?
• Are shared training resources helping drive government innovation?
• What have been the impacts of distributed teams on virtual learning environments?
• How are social networks and social media creating new models of education?