|
I’m not sure which side of the fence I sit on the issue of open collaboration space vs. private offices for software development teams. I’ve been on teams where each has been successful. Currently my team sits in a fairly open space and I know we are interrupted many time per day by co-workers taking personal calls from their General Contractors, talk about what happened on Survivor the night before. I hate that part of the open space - that is for sure – but damn when the collaboration is happening and the team in gelling – it is sweet.
[via Joel on Software - Sunday, October 16, 2005]
Multitasking in the Workplace
New York Times: Big screens are good, interruptions are bad, etc. The stuff about how long it takes to pick up a train of thought after being interrupted is really cool; I've been claiming this based on my own experience but I never had anything remotely scientific to prove it. You can read the original papers by Gloria Mark on her web site.
She also tries to pin down whether it's more productive to be "collocated" or not, by which, I think, she's comparing the number of interruptions suffered by people in private offices vs. open spaces. The bizarre thing she claims, which could be true, is that open-space-dwellers actually get voluntarily interrupted less because people can quickly see whether they're interruptible or not. She does mention that open-spacers do frequently decide to "interrupt themselves" to participate in another conversation that they overheard, something which is probably net beneficial for the team's productivity but which drives me crazy.
|