Working as a development product manager at Microsoft at the time I had no idea what scrum or agile development was, but this configuration of tables and chairs in the hallway of the 3rd floor of Microsoft's Building 114 just made sense to me.
I found these tables abandoned or stuck in hallways from other floors and dragged them here with my new team members. Then I ordered comfortable chairs from Microsoft's internal portal. We were set and took off and developed like mad.
The person, my friend, in the foreground found our environment to her liking, quiet, convenient yet friendly and joined us; as many travelers or consultants did from time to time. This worked for many reasons and gave MS full-timers the ability to find and interact with us without having to search around much.
Due to the location, our rules were straight forward, low tones, quiet, leave nothing in the room when leaving, push in your chair, and police your area. As you see in this photograph we had one phone for 18 + people. It rarely rang. The person being sought was nearly always there.
Twice in several months there was a slight disagreement about how open or closed the blinds should be but that environment worked very well for the team. We launched our project on time of course.
I absolutely loved working with them.
After I studied and worked with Agile development I came to understand that the techniques I had developed on my own, such as short daily meetings (scrum), worked for others.
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