There are many types of seating arrangements you might encounter. Marketers new to Agile may be surprised that there’s actually office furniture specifically made for it. The look is modern, dividers are low, everyone can see and hear each other, and it’s great for fostering collaboration. Not so great when you need to call your doctor and describe that rash, though. A “caves” (private rooms) and “commons” (shared areas) approach can help when folks need more solitude than earbuds or noise-cancelling headphones can provide.

There are many configurations possible, with varying degrees of togetherness between the business and the dev team. Here are some examples:

REAL CLOSE – THE 2011 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

The Public Relations Director sits next to the Scrum Manager. The Business Analyst sits next to the Email Marketing Coordinator. The Lead Developer sits next to the Social Media Manager. And they sip mochachinos and braid each others hair. Metaphorically, anyway. If (a) the dev team wants to commiserate about how clueless the business is or (b) the business wants to kvetch about how mean the dev team was for omitting the flash from the intro, each would have to get up and go somewhere to do it. Way too much trouble. If pair programming is in place, this configuration would be altered somewhat.

SORTA CLOSE – THE SEVENTH GRADE DANCE

The business folks on one side of the building, the dev team on the other side of the building. You share a stretch of carpet, maybe some common areas. Usually there’s a physical divider of some sort – a hallway, an atrium, conference rooms, elevators, a line of tables – something. You peer across the chasm curiously at each other. Bitching and eye-rolling at one another is kept on the down low – you could be caught. Come on, fellow Marketers. Grow a pair and cross over, it’s not that far. It’s dev – not Alderan.

SORTA CLOSE NOT REALLY – MARKETING IS VENUS, DEV IS FROM MARS

Separate buildings. Or cities. Try countries. This is where the commitment to collaborate really, really has to be there. Distributed teams are increasingly common, but here I’m really talking about dev teams separated from their business counterparts. Do the fly-ins – the team building events – the good video conferencing equipment. You’ll be fighting the “Us’ and “Them” syndrome. That battle isn’t the place to pinch pennies. Spend the money, and be vigilant.