Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Quiet Place

Working in an open plan office is generally a really useful thing. Having the QA team sitting all together, and sitting right next to part of the dev team, really increases the level of communication all around. It's very easy for someone to be puzzling on a problem and just ask the room at large, or for a conversation between two dev teams to expand to involve a third team - thus making sure a crucial change in the third team's code gets made.


It's important to have a quiet place as well.

As a manager, some conversations have to be held in private. Would you hold an interview in the middle of a team work area? Unlikely. Even if you're not a manager, sometimes you need peace and quiet. Maybe you have to schedule a doctor's appointment, maybe you need to rant and rail for a while.

Despite the open plan, not everyone needs to know everything. So make sure your open plan has a quiet place.


  1. I totally agree.

    Sometimes I like collaboration and camaraderie. Sometimes I just want some quiet so I can concentrate.

    Similarly, I really value that my company has an office, but attendance is optional.

  2. Hi catherine.

    As software development and software testing both are quite creative job, sp peace of mind is required.i just want to share http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html(See point 8).
    on the other hand, it is not possible to give seperate rooms to everybody because it will increase communication gap as well as you have mentioned.
    The only thing we can do is to avoid client phone calls, meetings in seperate room if possible :)