How Agile works in a design office

Hello! My name is Maria Boldyreva, and I have been heading the WildTeam design bureau for five years. Before that, I worked as a chief designer in various construction companies. Every day I encountered management problems in design companies and dreamed of changing it. In the end, I got down to business and was able to do it, so that my colleagues from the industry look at us with envy.

Here I talk about my experience, team, principles, results and hacks.

In previous columns, I talked about how we moved towards new principles of work and Agile and what we came to. And today I’ll tell you how we function and how Agile helps you achieve success, both team and personal.

Abstract about Agile

For us, Agile is a specific philosophy that helps improve interaction at all stages of work both within the team and when communicating with the customer. By introducing Agile into our work, we sincerely believe and subscribe to the ideas that:

• People and communication are more important than processes and tools;

• A product that works is more important than documentation that covers everything;

• Cooperation and communication with the customer are more important than contractual terms;

• Willingness to change and flexibility in your work is more important than blindly following the original plan.

In theory, Agile divides the entire process into short cycles called sprints. In each sprint, the team completes part of the tasks, agrees on the result with the customer and, if everything is satisfactory, continues to work further. As a result, the process becomes more flexible, since you can make changes at any stage and correct errors immediately, rather than accumulating them. In IT, each stage of a sprint brings an intermediate result that can be demonstrated to the client. Everything is more complicated in architecture and design, and below I will tell you why and how we get out of it.

Functional and product teams in Agile: what is the difference and how they work

Agile typically has product teams, but engineering tends to be more common/always functional. We had to adapt the method to our activities, maintaining both structures with specific tasks. That is, we have both functional and product teams working simultaneously.

They consist of specialists in one field: designers, architects, engineers, electricians. There is always a team lead nearby – a person who helps solve problems and monitors the workload.

The team holds a weekly meeting to discuss current and future tasks. Afterwards, the team lead conveys information to the managers about the problems and needs of the team. For example, it may report that one of the engineers needs help or that another specialist needs to be added to the project.

Team leads also monitor the career growth of their colleagues. For example, if a junior engineer wants to become a leading specialist, the team lead can offer him more complex tasks so that he develops his professional skills. I talked about this in detail in the last column.

Our main principle is that everyone on the team is equal. The prefixes “main” or “leading” do not affect the hierarchy in any way. These positions are more needed for allocating resources and calculating wages according to the grade system.

They unite specialists from different professions working on one project. Previously, conflicts often arose in such teams, since everyone did their part of the work without thinking about the impact on others. Now specialists from different fields work together, which allows the interests of all parties to be taken into account.

The product team organizes its work as follows:

• Study the project and draw up a list of questions for the customer;

• Conducts a meeting with the client to clarify all important points;

• Develops a project plan, sets priorities and determines how many specialists are needed for each task;

• Determines tasks for the first sprint and distributes them among employees.

Every two weeks a review is held: the team discusses the results and checks each other’s work for errors. Instead of burdening one person with checking hundreds of drawings, it is easier to find errors collectively during such meetings. For example, an architect may receive feedback from an electrician who notices that the allocated cabinet space is not large enough.

Product teams are responsible for the quality of their work, but they are not punished if deadlines are missed. Instead, we analyze the reasons for the delays to avoid repeating mistakes in the future.

Planning tools and how they help

In IT, a sprint typically consists of five phases: design, prototyping, testing, feedback, and launch. But in our bureau the projects are much more complex – there are hundreds of drawings for one building. We were unable to completely adapt the IT approach, so we came up with our own scheme.

• The product team draws up a list of tasks for two weeks and tells the customer about its steps;

• We make changes if the customer has urgent comments;

• The team works for two weeks, receives the result and agrees on it;

• The cycle repeats with new tasks.

The basis of our work is planning, to which we devote a lot of time and use different tools.

• Scheme of work on the project is a detailed algorithm of all actions, including the work of functional teams and their interaction. The outline helps you plan deadlines and estimate how long each task will take.

• General resource planning — a tool for distributing work tasks. The team leader, together with the team, decides how many people are needed to complete each stage of the project and who will best cope with the task.

• Asana board — platform for project management. It is divided into several columns, such as project goals, tasks for the current sprint, tasks in progress, tasks under review and completed tasks. This allows you to transparently track the team's progress and always be aware of what stage the project is at.

• Working Hours Reports is a tool with which we track how much time employees spend on different tasks. This helps estimate the cost of work and adjust plans for future projects.

In the next column, I’ll tell you how we work with clients and simplify bureaucracy, and why employees love working at WildTeam.

If you are interested in working with us or learning more about our projects, subscribe to our telegram channel. We are constantly growing, recruiting specialists for new projects and will welcome new friends and colleagues.