Hacking a shopping centre

Creating Australasia's largest Agile workspace

Ben Ross

How do creative people set up their workspace for productivity and creativity?

What works for the most creative people? Space to collaborate

1. To work

2. To chill …. and work

and

3. Space to work on your own

“If a building doesn’t encourage collaboration, you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity”Steve Jobs (on Pixar’s office)

1. Space to collaborate - work

2. Space to collaborate – more relaxed

3. Space to work on your own

1. Space to collaborate - work

2. Spaces to work on your own

Developed hypotheses and experimented in our existing premises

• Agile walls – how big, how many… what type

• Standup desks – how many, how fit with other desks

• Technology – what works (lync, jira, rally, hangouts…)

• Meeting rooms – how many, how used, by whom

• Team area layouts – Optimum composition, self

contained vs shared areas..

Deep customer discovery:

Feedback from our existing customers (our staff!) = Four themes for the new environment

1.Encourage Innovation

2.Enable Connection

3.Remind us of our Customers

4.Amplify our Culture & Values

Individuals and interactions (over process and tools)

Where can 500+ people coalesce in a single space to enable collaboration and self organization?

Slide 27

What worked well for MYOB?

Local teams - big physical local walls

Distributed teams - technology for virtual walls & meetings

Standup VC camera is here

Collaboration & chill out spaces

Collaboration & chill out spaces

Collaboration & chill out spaces - Campsite

Collaboration & chill out spaces

Collaboration & chill out spaces - Library

Collaboration & chill out spaces - Sport

Allow teams to ‘own’ their space

Think carefully about technology

Tablets enable staff to book rooms and see whether the room is booked (from afar)

What we learned along the way…

Customer collaboration (over contract negotiation)

Requirements cannot be fully collected at the beginning of the software development cycle, therefore continuous customer or stakeholder involvement is very important.

As soon as we moved in, we made changes on the fly:• Noise dampening

• Extra showers

• More walls

• More standup desks

• Bike storage,…..

Social experiment (noise vs customer connection)

Phone-based support teams

Development team

Plan a break-out workspace here….

….. but teams choose to gather here…

Enabled self organisation …..

If we could do it again….

Self contained areas

Work

Collaborate

Standup

Think carefully about technology

• Staff are unforgiving – it’s got to be plug & play

Integrated cabling & connectivity (USB, video camera, VGA/DVI/HDMI, power, phone…)

Think carefully about technology

• A technology cocktail is often needed• Voice, video and content across multiple

locations including private home offices

Try this at your work

1.Learn from the rockstars

2.Listen to your customers (staff)

3.Run experiments– Take a lean & agile approach to the project (test & learn)

– Don’t bolt anything down

4.Carefully consider how technology is embedded into your office environment

Keen to know more, want to see it first hand?

Drop in, visitors are welcome - ben.ross@myob.com

Thanks for listening…Ben RossFollow me @benross50