Offices do not mean having each person locked in their room never interacting with anyone else. They mean you can close the door and be able to focus on something.
In my experience you get a lot more interaction when people have private offices, or at least cubes. It's easy to walk into someone's office and have a discussion. Easier than let's go find a meeting room so we don't disturb everyone. It's also pretty easy to call other people in as needed and have an impromptu meeting without needing to book a room for that and without disturbing others. Not to mention other technologies like e-mail, messaging etc.
The most collaborative places I worked in are those where people had offices and the least collaborative ones have open plans. Anecdotal but there you have it.
Let's face it, open plan offices are about reducing cost and pretending to be collaborative. It's the "Agile" of offices and I don't mean it in a good way.
>It's easy to walk into someone's office and have a discussion.
Certainly less easy than joining in on a conversation you overhear while sitting at your desk.
What we have here is disgreement over the optimal 'activation energy' for social interactions that produces the best work. This parameter depends on all kinds of factors, e.g. the type of work and work culture. What we need is a workflow that optimizes this parameter for a given office.
IOW, somebody needs to come up with a cost function and run gradient descent on it.
It's a little out there, but I think VR workspaces will potentially provide such a method. Currently the iteration cost is too high. (For example it could involve rearranging desks, tearing down walls, buying equipment, etc.) VR opens the door to a malleable workspace that still comes close to pairty with face to face communications (it is not there today but most likely will be in a few generations.)
For large companies, I can imagine using new branch offices for a/b testing.
A while ago I read a comment here about a university that, instead of paving roads to a new campus, just had grass everywhere. A semester later they paved over all the parts where the grass died from all the foot traffic.
I wonder if something like that would be workable? Have easily reconfigurable panels and furniture, encourage the staff to arrange it however they like, wait six months, then standardize/remove pain points/make permanent?
>>It's easy to walk into someone's office and have a discussion.
>Certainly less easy than joining in on a conversation you overhear while sitting at your desk.
If you overhear a conversation and even understand what it is about you clearly aren't focused on your(!) work. So you are in an unproductive state. It's not your duty to think about other peoples problems. If they can't manage it without help they have to ask you (or everybody, in an broadcast) explicitly over an asynchronous communication channel.
There is also no question about whether disturbances are good or bad: They lower productivity and induce stress. This things were shown many times by different scientific studies. This point isn't for debate.
If you want productive cooperation, you have only to encourage people to ask when they are stuck, and also encourage people being as helpful as possible when they are actually asked something. I think that's the true magic formula.
I cannot speak for yakult, but be careful with generalizations like:
> If you overhear a conversation and even understand what it is about you clearly aren't focused on your(!) work. So you are in an unproductive state.
I find it extremely difficult to work alone in an office. When I was still agency-side, before we moved to open workspaces I would often go to coffee shops to work because I found it very difficult to focus unless there was a certain level of conversational white noise. Once we finally did make the move it was great to be able to jump into a conversation on a project I wasn't a direct stakeholder in just because I had something to add (or vice versa). There are any number of day to day things that aren't covered in stand-ups that simply pop up organically.
> There is also no question about whether disturbances are good or bad: They lower productivity and induce stress. This things were shown many times by different scientific studies. This point isn't for debate.
Of course there is a question and of course it's open for debate. We know this because we're not all robots - different people are different. Now, that being said, I absolutely agree that open offices aren't for everyone, which is why in my opinion the magic formula isn't to stick everyone alone in a room and say "talk more", but it's to offer a combination of both open spaces and solitary offices to fit the needs of the individual.
> I cannot speak for yakult, but be careful with generalizations like:
>> If you overhear a conversation and even understand what it is about you clearly aren't focused on your(!) work. So you are in an unproductive state.
That is not an generalization. Explanation follows:
> I would often go to coffee shops to work because I found it very difficult to focus unless there was a certain level of conversational white noise.
Listening to other people is distraction. When you listen and think about what somebody is talking you can't think about your task at the same time. That's the opposite of being focused.
I know there are people having problems to focus on something and need distraction every few minutes. But that's another problem. That people often even think they are productive when they think about several things at once and make jumps in their head from one thing to another, but they simply don't even know what it means to be focused (because they don't have that ability at all).
> it was great to be able to jump into a conversation on a project I wasn't a direct stakeholder in just because I had something to add
From a project management viewpoint that's not great. When somebody is assigned to a task he has to dedicate all the time he is paid for to that task. And not using this time to solve other peoples issues by chance. It also makes tracking the time which was spend for a task imprecise. When e.g. two people where assigned but actually three people where doing it the next time estimate can go wrong because the time someone just jumped in can't be tracked correctly (and on the contrary that time is missing on the other task).
There is a time you sit together and discuss how to make something and then there is the time you actually do it following the agreed plan. In the second phase you need to concentrate so you shouldn't get distracted. Distraction in the second phase is a killer to productivity. Thinking about other peoples problems is distraction.
> There are any number of day to day things that aren't covered in stand-ups that simply pop up organically.
That isn't a problem, that's normal. Send an email, use the chat channel or open a ticket... The small things that pop up can be discussed asynchronously or even later. When you can't do any further work without getting feedback the ahead of time planing was bad and you have to discuss things in more detail the next time. Simply use more time for discussing and planing so disruptions of the working time of others afterwards can be avoided.
>> There is also no question about whether disturbances are good or bad: They lower productivity and induce stress. This things were shown many times by different scientific studies. This point isn't for debate.
> Of course there is a question and of course it's open for debate. We know this because we're not all robots - different people are different.
That question is already answered by scientific studies.
People are indeed different and like I said there are even those who think they can do multitasking. But that's an illusion. The difference between people is only in the amount of drop of productivity. When you try to do several things at once you will have accomplished less at the end of the day. That's a proven fact.
> in my opinion the magic formula isn't to stick everyone alone in a room and say "talk more", but it's to offer a combination of both open spaces and solitary offices to fit the needs of the individual.
Of curse there must be space for both collaboration and focused work. You have to have both. So open offices alone are bad. Individual offices alone are bad, too. You shouldn't be in one of the areas all the time. When you discuss your teams next steps it's much simpler when sitting together. But when you work on the execution of the agreed plan, you have to have a quiet place on your own.
When you can't stay focused in solidity and without distraction you have to work on your ability to concentrate. Maybe it is even a medical condition like ADHD.
Reading through your comment I can't help but think "this is a junior person who has never actually worked in an office."
Offices are complex setups full of complex people, and to think that you can extrapolate your few experiences or a study to cover any office, ever, anywhere is hopelessly naïve.
"But when you work on the execution of the agreed plan, you have to have a quiet place on your own" <- This is simply not true for everyone, as much as you (for some reason) wish that it was. I'm similar to the person you replied to in that I work best in "busier" environments. (Also, just to cut you off at the pass, I don't have ADHD - what a very strange comment to make). It has nothing to do with multi-tasking, I just enjoy and am far more productive working amongst other people than I am working alone in an office. I don't need to "work on my ability to concentrate", as my technical directors can attest to, it's just who I am.
I think you would be well served by understanding that not everyone is like you, and that people have different needs and abilities. It will help as you progress in your career.
> Reading through your comment I can't help but think "this is a junior person who has never actually worked in an office."
Wrong assumption. Almost ten years in professional software development.
> I work best in "busier" environments.
Can you then explain the contradiction how being distracted by visuals, noise and human speech should help to concentrate?
> It has nothing to do with multi-tasking, I just enjoy and am far more productive working amongst other people than I am working alone in an office.
It has a lot to do with multi-tasking. Your brain uses some capacity to process all the distracting inputs. Even if you try not to get distracted by them. That's a subconscious process. Nobody can do anything about it. (Even when you sleep you brain processes inputs from the outside world!)
When you are in a distractive environment your brain loses processing power for the actual task. That's something that can be measured. (A simple test is to let people solve math exercises under time pressure in different environments)
I don't say that working only on your own is the most productive thing to do in every situation, it isn't. Discussing things is much easier when people come together. But when you have to be focused on only one task you have to be in a non distracting environment.
> When you are in a distractive environment your brain loses processing power for the actual task. That's something that can be measured. (A simple test is to let people solve math exercises under time pressure in different environments)
No. This (might) measure the impact of an environment on a specific individual solving math exercises under time pressure...nothing more. If you actually have 10 years of dev experience than you should very well know that this isn't what development is!
> But when you have to be focused on only one task you have to be in a non distracting environment.
I'm standing in the rain telling you it's wet outside and you're pointing to a weather report telling me it's sunny. Not every person is built to a factory spec - we're all individuals. I, and apparently other people in this thread like me, do not do our most proficient work in non distracting environments. It's really that simple : )
I'll ignore your armchair diagnosis that I may have ADHD and just say that it seems like we're largely in agreement on the efficacy of mixed spaced offices.
In my experience you get a lot more interaction when people have private offices, or at least cubes. It's easy to walk into someone's office and have a discussion. Easier than let's go find a meeting room so we don't disturb everyone. It's also pretty easy to call other people in as needed and have an impromptu meeting without needing to book a room for that and without disturbing others. Not to mention other technologies like e-mail, messaging etc.
The most collaborative places I worked in are those where people had offices and the least collaborative ones have open plans. Anecdotal but there you have it.
Let's face it, open plan offices are about reducing cost and pretending to be collaborative. It's the "Agile" of offices and I don't mean it in a good way.