Office Space

Extreme Programming Explained includes a chapter on facilities strategy. In our XP experience, teams generally work in a large room or a pod reconfigured from cubicles to form an open space. Sometimes each team member has her own cube or space somewhere else.

In a lot of traditional development shops, test teams are kept separate from programmers. Everyone has to get over that for XP teams to jell. As a tester, you'll be much happier when you truly feel like part of the development team. It might feel weird at first, if you haven't enjoyed a close working relationship with programmers before. It's weird for the programmers too. They may not know what the heck you're doing there.

Working and pairing with programmers will give you all great mutual understanding. If you have a burning question or have uncovered a showstopper defect, usually someone can free up pretty quickly to help you. If a programmer needs help testing some new code, you're there to help.

Working together as a team requires a place to do that. If you're working onsite for an external customer, devote time to explaining your development strategy to them. Ask for the facilities you need nothing fancy, just enough room for customers, room to pair-program and hold standups, facilities for good communication.

With large projects, it can be a challenge to accommodate everyone on the team. No matter what size your project, planning is essential. If issues with facilities arise mid-project, they can eat up as much time as a ten-car wreck during rush hour. If possible, assign responsibility to this area to someone outside the development team: an information services administrator or someone in a similar role, who has the time and knowledge to take care of problems that arise.

With XP projects, our customers are supposed to be working side by side with us. Even if you have an onsite customer, he may not wish to work in the team's workspace 100% of the time. He may want to spend some time in his own space, so he can remain productive with his "real" jobs. Although XP works best when the customer is physically always present, you may be forced to be flexible on this issue. If so, make arrangements with the customer so he's always available by cell phone, instant message, or some other means.