The future of work has become a pressing matter of concern: Researchers, business consultancies, and industrial companies are intensively studying how new work models could be best implemented to increase workplace flexibility and creativity. In particular, the agile model has become one of the “must-have” elements for re-organizing work practices, especially for technology development work. However, the implementation of agile work often comes together with strong presumptions: it is regarded as an inevitable tool that can be universally integrated into different workplaces while having the same outcome of flexibility, transparency, and flattened hierarchies everywhere. This paper challenges such essentializing assumptions by turning agile work into a “matter of care.” We argue that care work occurs in contexts other than feminized reproductive work, namely, technology development. Drawing on concepts from feminist Science and Technology Studies and ethnographic research at agile technology development workplaces in Germany and Kenya, we examine what work it takes to actually keep up with the imperative of agile work. The analysis brings the often invisibilized care practices of human and nonhuman actors to the fore that are necessary to enact and stabilize the agile promises of flexibilization, co-working, and rapid prototyping. Revealing the caring sociotechnical relationships that are vital for working agile, we discuss the emergence of power asymmetries characterized by hierarchies of skills that are differently acknowledged in the daily work of technology development. The paper ends by speculating on the emancipatory potential of a care perspective, by which we seek to inspire careful Emancipatory Technology Studies.

工作的未来已成为迫切关注的问题：研究人员，商业顾问和工业公司都在深入研究如何最好地实施新的工作模型以增加工作场所的灵活性和创造力。尤其是，敏捷模型已成为重新组织工作实践（尤其是技术开发工作）的“必备”要素之一。但是，执行敏捷工作通常伴随着强烈的假设：它被认为是一种不可避免的工具，可以普遍地集成到不同的工作场所，同时在各地都具有相同的灵活性，透明性和扁平化的结构。本文通过将敏捷工作转变为“照顾事项”，对这种基本假设提出了挑战。我们认为，护理工作发生在女性化生殖工作以外的其他领域，即技术开发。借鉴德国和肯尼亚敏捷技术开发工作场所的女权主义科学技术研究和人种志研究的概念，我们研究了实际需要多少工作才能跟上敏捷工作的要求。该分析使人类和非人类行为者经常不可见的护理实践脱颖而出，这对于制定和稳定灵活性，协同工作和快速成型的敏捷承诺是必不可少的。揭示了关爱敏捷的工作至关重要的社会技术关系，我们讨论了以技术层次结构为特征的权力不对称现象的出现，这些不平等现象在技术开发的日常工作中得到了公认。