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A team room can be a great solution if it's done thoughtfully. The big drawback to private offices is that it can inhibit the cross-polination of projects that
by jtbigwoo 15y ago
A team room can be a great solution if it's done thoughtfully. The big drawback to private offices is that it can inhibit the cross-polination of projects that results in revolutionary ideas. A few rules about group offices that seem to help:
-The team decides the furniture layout.
-The team members don't have to be on the same project, but they should perform similar functions. Don't put the project managers in the same room as the developers!
-There should be ample meeting space separate from the group office space.
-The team needs someone who is senior enough to lead the group if they need rules on distractions and interruptions. For example, in one group office we sent questions to each other over IM even though we were literally elbow-to-elbow. In another group office, we talked almost constantly because we each brought specialized, non-intersecting knowledge to the project.
-The team doesn't last forever. When projects or people start to turn over, it's a good idea to re-form the groups.
(edit: list format looked terrible)
- Drbble 15y agoI love the productivity boost of sitting with my PM: "hey, feature x.y.z is actually a pain, now that I look at it closely. Can I email scrap it?" "scrapped. " Way better than spending a couple of days working on it before a weekly checkup meeting.
- skrebbel 15y agotry a daily standup.
- lawnchair_larry 15y agoProject managers don't typically make such decisions. They ask how X is coming along, and how long Y will take.
- MortenK 15y agoThe PM might also be the Product Manager. In that case they would indeed be taking those decisions.
- jiggy2011 15y agoThis depends a lot of the size of the project and company. Some teams may work more on a model where they just have to deliver X, where X is some high level business requirement. In such circumstances it might not be unreasonable for the project manager to make decisions about which particular bells and whistles to include in the version 1 deliverable etc.
- mindcrime 15y agoAnd there's no chance you could, instead, just get up and walk to where the PM sits, or call him/her via phone, or use IM, or just send an email, and accomplish the same end? To me, it sounds like a false dichotomy to say that you either sit together and have rapid communication OR you sit apart and are forced to wait for a weekly checkup meeting... surely there's a continuum there??