You can buy the Herman Miller modular furniture with the low partitions. And you can intermix the Marketing team in with the Dev team in those new ergonomi-pods. Before you do, it’s a good idea to do some research about how the two teams spend their workdays.

Many marketers spend significant parts of their workdays on conference calls. Within open office configurations, conference calls can be painful. That thin, chin-high partition between you and your cube mate sitting five feet away isn’t enough to deaden sound. So marketers can’t hear the call well – and they sound to the other callers like they’re dialing in from a frat party, unless they’re constantly on mute. One marketer I know coped by putting the handsfree earpiece in one ear and a foam earplug in the other during calls.

The open configuration can be ideal for pair programmers – but it can be distracting for two ad managers who talk to lettershops and media buyers all day long. There’s little advantage to sitting within earshot of all your colleagues while doing that kind of work. And distraction saps efficiency.

The setup makes it easy to just pop on over to your colleague with a question. Yet marketers and programmers have very different rhythms to their workday. Programmers have specific tasks to perform, but usually have some latitude in when and how they’ll accomplish them. Marketers generally have scheduled appointments all day. Asking marketers questions as they arise often is efficient for the programmer, but not so much for the marketer.

Open office configurations can be challenging for supervisors, regardless of which department they’re in. Unless they occupy a space which allows them to work with their back to a wall or window, their computer screens are an open book to subordinates. If there aren’t enough walls or windows to go around, any work dealing with personnel or headcount budgeting must be done somewhere else.

Open office configurations do indeed deliver on the promise of fostering collaboration. They can be positively liberating for the right group of people – and erode the quality of work life for others. They’re not a one-size-fits-all solution. Do some homework and determine how people do their work all day long before signing that purchase order to replace every workstation.

Holidays bring salutations.
Agile process brings iterations.
Wishing you New Years Day felicitations,
Sans headaches from excess libations!

Cheers!
Cathy

Marketarian: “Hot! Hot! Hot! This project is so amazingly important it absolutely has to be squeezed into the next release!”

Geek: “So this project is so amazingly important it has to squeeze out the amazingly important project you came to me with yesterday that absolutely had to be squeezed into the release?”

Marketerian: “Of course I understand and embrace Agile Process – why do you ask?”

Geek: “No reason. I’ve just never seen requirements delivered on a hand-truck before.”

Marketerian: “Hey, Trevor, I know Code Complete is tomorrow, but check out this idea, wouldn’t it be cool if we streamed a video of users’ faces using the app, maybe in a rich-media banner? Not real users, we’d use actors of course, but…hey no, no wait!! OMG, we could show real users if we added an upload feature, or maybe a combination of the two…”

Geek: “Squirrel!”

Marketer: “You need me to review it and approve it today? Does it have to be today? I’ve got an outing – er, meeting thing this afternoon.”

Geek: “You need me to build it and deliver it this month? If the answer is no, have fun at Six Flags!”

Marketerian: “I don’t want to be pinned down. I’ll know the right look and feel when I see it.”

Geek: “Yeah, you know, I’m not going to bet the rent on that.”