XP Practice: Sit Together

November 7, 2007 by Artem Marchenko

Sit Together practice is one of the simplest to define and sometimes one of the most difficult to implement in eXtreme Programming. It namely means co-locating the whole team in a single room often called "war room". The idea behind it is to stimulate the information exchange by making it simple to just turn to the colleague and ask. Encouraging free conversation leads to the much quicker information exchange as tacit knowledge is transferred by gestures, information and buzz around.

However, it has to be taken into account that forcing the team sit together, before it is ready for it can be dangerous and difficult. To be effective sitting together requires a significant level of trust and alignment of the work - it is much less irritating to be disrupted by a side talk on a relevant topic, than by something you have no interest in. Both trust and work alignment are usually developed in the course of agile software development, but takes time.

In order to leave some time for privacy and just for letting people to have some phone calls area XP teams often have several cubicles or small rooms that can be used, when needed.

Links

• Sit Together by James Shore. From his book "The Art of Agile Development"

This page is a part of the Extreme Programming overview

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