Open all External Spaces
…yet respect personal space
The topic of open spaces is a regularly revisited hot topic. As Yan rightly points out, study after study finds that the productivity of individuals working in open spaces is impacted quite severely.
I pretty much agree with Yan on the effects he cites on individuals. Yet everything is not quite what it seems. We have to be careful about generalisation here. On the whole I agree with the premise in most of this article. However, I don’t necessarily see the problem as one of open spaces, I see the variety and diversity of individuals, and their associated working practises, as well as the naturally associated dynamic between them and their environment. Key to this is whether there is merit in the trade off of the productivity for the good of the team.
Experience Report
I hated open spaces. I couldn’t stand pair programming when I first tried it. It made me really nervous. Not because I feared being exposed in some way, but because I spent a lot of time deep thinking about problems and I was fast. Lightning fast. The Hollywood movies kind of fast. Anyone working with me always slowed me down and as someone who delivered software using structured, process oriented methods, some of them formal (yes, I mean math — VDM and later OCL to be precise) and did so on time and on budget, and having gone through my university degree having to carry folk, I dreaded working with people. The mere thought of it made me anxious.
Fast forward 16 years and having done it a number of times, indeed all the time since 2007, I can’t really remember working the old fashioned way and crucially, I don’t mind them anywhere near as much. Make no mistake, I absolutely accept the effects the research mentioned in his footnotes highlights, I also have to highlight that they do not themselves research all the necessary aspects to come to the wider, more general conclusions.
There are really 3 things going on when developing systems. There is your interaction with the system, other people’s interactions with the system, and their interactions with you. That latter one can happen through code or documentation by proxy. When they ask you for help (which includes asking questions) you sacrifice some of your time for the good of them and the good of the team by proxy. It is the reduction of suboptimal structures that get you closer to systemically optimal performance, not speeding up individuals.
Respecting Personal Space
Too much of a good thing is bad for you. This is no exception. If you have too much of an open space, just like having too much freedom, or too much privacy, everything disintegrates. It requires a balance between one of a multitude of extremes. This is as much a cultural problem with our capacity for compassionate interaction as the open spaces themselves.
Part of this is understanding your team. Part of empowering and trusting your team is allowing them to form and shape their own space. They have to be allowed to engage or not, as the case may be. The key is to find the most productive ‘mental’ place. If members want to sit alone because that’s the highest level of productivity for a particularly deep task, let them sit alone. As a manager, your job is to facilitate the productivity of their work-streams, not blindly follow process.
Many of the most productive spaces combine open spaces with closed breakout areas, nooks or dens allowing people space to be productive. It also requires us to accept the reality that a lot of people like open spaces as much as folk like to have a space they can make homely. Hot-desks in particular are difficult as you never know where you are sitting from one day to the next. Yet, it’s ironic that this is the way I mostly work now. Using whichever city I am in and it’s plethora of hotels, professional body offices, hot-desking and coworking spaces as an almost infinitely large office. Each provides me with a different space to do different types of work.
Hence, open spaces? I’m alright with that now, despite thinking it ridiculous in 2000. Yet, I’ve been around enough of these places to know when a company has it completely wrong.
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