Planning doesn’t have to be the enemy of agile

What should real estate and workplace planning look like in an agile organization? 

As your organization's business needs change, can your real estate and workplace planning keep up?  Unassigned seating provides some flexibility.  As team composition changes, just show up to work and sit with the new people on your new team.   

What happens when changes are larger:  there aren't enough seats together for your new team, the new team must consolidate people from several different floors, or your team can't find a conference room for the all of the time you need to be together.  Where do you go now? 

In response to space utilization measures that show most seats are only occupied 40% to 60% of the time, many organizations are moving to unassigned seating and activity-based workplace strategies, which often lead to less total space and less workplace flexibility as needs change.  

If space planners need to provide direction, will you get an answer quickly, or will slow, time-consuming planning processes delay consolidating your new group in one place?

Is this your experience?  If so, Core Planning can provide real-time planning tools to transform real estate and workplace planning in agile organizations.  Contact me at jmather@criticalcore.com or 720.201.4487.

For more thoughts on planning for agile organizations, take a look at Allessandro Di Fiore's Harvard Business Review article "Planning Doesn't Have to Be the Enemy of Agile."