The AgilECo Pattern Language: Physical Environment

Abstract

Communication is crucial in agile contexts due to the need for collaboration and the number of different people involved, ranging from developers to users and business people. This communication should be effective to ensure everyone is on the same page; otherwise it can lead to undesired results such as misunderstanding and loss of productivity. As such, there is a need to ensure good communication in agile contexts. This paper presents a pattern language to tackle this issue, alongside with the patterns of a section of the language. The pattern language aims to provide a set of practices that help with recurrent problems and increase the effectiveness of communication. The patterns presented in this paper (Information Radiators, Co-Located Team, Open Space, Informal Communication Space and Cubes) address the issues related with the physical environment surrounding an agile team.