In July 2000, a team of analysts and researchers from Gartner and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) School of Architecture and Planning launched a one-year project to study the "workplace industry" — the industry that includes the corporate organizations responsible for housing the workforce, and the firms that design, build, furnish and operate work environments. The workplace industry also includes those portions of the IT industry that provision, connect and support the tools and communications networks which are fundamental to work in the modern economy. Finally, the workplace industry encompasses the corporate managers whose policies influence how and where people work.

The result: A 150-page report entitled "The Agile Workplace: Supporting People and Their Work."

	How to get the report:
	If you are a Gartner Client The full text of the report is available to all Gartner clients. If you are a client and you do not see an icon above that reads "Download PDF," you are not logged in. Please return to the homepage and log in to access the PDF file. If you are not a Gartner Client Click here to order a hardcopy of the report.

What did we find? Change predominates. Change is a recurring feature of our findings. New developments in the business economy, new technologies, and new attitudes about what can be accomplished by workplace development all suggest significant change in the workplace industry in the years ahead.

Below, we present "Twelve for Five," an excerpt from the complete report. In this excerpt, we offer twelve emerging practices that are likely to enter the mainstream of infrastructure management within the next five years.

1. Say goodbye to the corner office. Traditional notions of the workplace as a fixed workstation in a fixed office, at a fixed address, will be transcended. Work will move to wherever it can best be accomplished, regardless of who "owns" the space or its supporting infrastructure. The ability to work in cyber- and physical space will be critical to successful work.

2. Workplace infrastructure must be agile. Workplace agility will be the highest priority of infrastructure design. Design will aim for workplaces that are capable of responding quickly to mission changes, external and internal events, and organizational learning.

3. People centric workplaces. Workplace-making will move beyond an alignment with business strategy and become intertwined with the continuous improvement of work. Work and the workplace will be co-invented with the goal of accommodating the diverse needs of individuals and teams.

4. The network is the workplace. The workplace portfolio will transform itself from a collection of properties to a network of places and electronic connections. Organizations will draw on an increasing range of funding and servicing options as they acquire, manage and service their real estate.

5. Total cost of ownership. Corporations will take a holistic view of the total cost of occupancy (or ownership). They will rely on total cost calculations to reveal the true cost of provisioning workers — irrespective of funding source — and to make space, technology and outsourcing decisions.

6. Collaborative infrastructure design. Infrastructure design and management will become the responsibility of multidisciplinary groups. Separate areas of expertise will continue to exist, but they will be drawn out of their silos and harnessed to collaborative efforts.

7. Outsourcing. A growing number of transactional and tactical functions will be outsourced, freeing infrastructure managers to direct their energies toward workplace strategies. Partnerships and alliances based on transparent service levels will become the norm as partners work together to innovate and add value based features.

8. Best-in-class workplace suppliers. Enterprises will work with a handful of preferred workplace suppliers, each representing best-in-class service in particular categories. Corporate clients will expect these chosen vendors to collaborate and share information. Facilities management, asset management and IT services will be packaged by corporate clients or service providers.

9. Risk management and the workplace. Decisions regarding workplace portfolio structure and outsourcing service arrangements will be based on an analysis of financial, property and business risks. Sophisticated tools and processes will be used to determine which risks should be transferred and which can best be managed by the organization itself.

10. The Web meets ERP. Web-based tools that integrate HR, IT, facilities management and asset management will mesh with enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and supply chain management systems. These tools will be used by enterprises to manage information flow between groups, and will underpin service provider and corporate activities.

11. Service providers will drive change. Service providers will help drive improvements in corporate infrastructure capabilities and strategy. New workplace products will help enterprises merge cyber- and physical spaces in ways that enable work to move seamlessly between different domains. Many of these products will become as commonplace as the Web and cell phones.

12. Leaders will harness the power of the workplace. Corporate leaders will recognize the power of an infrastructure strategy to enable continuous work improvement. They will work with infrastructure managers to review and re-balance their portfolios to meet changing business needs and to address issues of capital allocation and risk management.

These emerging practices are neither radical nor entirely new. Nevertheless, few enterprises have adopted all or even many of them. However, we believe this will change in the near-term for the compelling reason that they serve basic corporate needs: for maximum asset utilization, for work enhancement and for agility. The challenge of adopting these practices will fall equally on the managers of physical and IT assets, and the many people who design, direct and do the work of the enterprise. Which of these groups will lead will be less important than having each of the three groups involved. Working together, they will build and operate more productive and agile workplaces.