Creating the Right Environment for Teamwork

At work everyone on the team have their own offices. It’s a pretty nice setup: lot’s of space, privacy – in short, it really doesn’t get much better in terms of individual space. However, the offices are scattered about the building and they definitely create barriers to certain kinds of communication. It has all sorts of interesting side effects. For example: currently, people will call into a meeting from their office, even if the meeting room is 10 feet down the hall. I have no idea what impact individual offices have on team productivity compared to other arrangements.

However, very soon now we are going to have an opportunity to observe the differences between individual offices and an open “bay” arrangement with the team co-located. Management has mandated a change to this new arrangement, like it or not. It’s all with the notion of supporting the companies transition to agile development. I’ve worked in both environments and seen many of the advantages/disadvantages of each.

This time I’m making an effort to keep a neutral stance on the change. As you might imagine, there are some folks who are pretty bent out of shape about losing their offices. I’m trying to focus on one question: What can I do to make this new env