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Yay. Another "Let's argue about open floorplan offices" article. Never can have enough of those. I'm not going to take apart the article: there's simply too ma
by DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Yay. Another "Let's argue about open floorplan offices" article. Never can have enough of those.
I'm not going to take apart the article: there's simply too many errors to get into. I will say in the author's defense that many companies will jump onto a bandwagon without having any idea of why other people are riding or where it's going. [insert long list of good ideas that corporate america adopted and killed]
On a personal note, I do not like co-location. I also do not like open plan offices. I like it quiet, with my space, my music, my 3-screen development setup, and my door. Which I can shut.
And that's what makes this discussion so painful for me to both watch and participate in. You see, as somebody who helps teams perform better, for certain kinds of work -- creative work where there is a lot of change and risk -- open plan beats the hell out of other setups. It's not even close. [for the proper definition of open plan.]
In the past couple of years I have seen several teams that were unable to accomplish much of anything start working much more effectively by simply sitting beside each other and being there during the day. In some cases, they did nothing else: just sat beside each other. Still, work improved. The effect is so noticeable you could almost write a book and start a movement just on open floorplan.
The last misconception I'll address, since it seems to run rampant, is that open floor plan is not about productivity or cost savings. It's about having people work with each other. This may actually mean less work gets done; but it's the right work. Open floor plan is where the guy at the end of the table late on a Friday afternoon observes aloud to himself "You know, maybe we should be doing X instead of Y" and everybody has the social and emotional context to realize that you just changed the scope of the work from 10x to x. [insert many more examples here]