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"War Rooms" Double Software Productivity
matt20 writes "Teams of workers that labored together for several months in specially designed "war rooms" were twice as productive as their counterparts working in traditional office arrangements, a study by University of Michigan researchers has found. Say goodbye to little cubes; it's war baby. I used to get tons done in a living room full of other people watching tv, doing
homework, and programming, but the biggest problem is always choosing the music.
Now only if that crazy guy in the wheel chair would stop tring to salute Hitler all the time, we could really get some work done.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Sitting down facing a screen, it doesn't really care if you work on the programming task at hand or if you play a couple rounds of xmame. With your peers all with you, you can't let the team down. So, by creating a team atmosphere, the end result is probably a constant fear of not wanting to screw things up for everyone ;)
On a lighter note, does anyone out there work in a "war room" type enviornment? It sounds like somewhere I'd like to work, but only if the chairs were leather and really comfortable ;)
-bugg
This reminds me of the claim of extreme programming that working in pairs increases productivity. I think it's just because you feel more guilty screwing around when the other guy is working, so you both end up working. Kind of a prisoners' dilemma, I guess.
I can believe that.
I often find myself going to the Operating Systems lab to get stuff done, just because it's quiet, it's locked, (to only let the real nerds in) and there are lots of computers there, and comfy chairs, and a big table in the middle and stuff...
Now if only I could get to the article. Anyone have it mirrored or cached or something?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
anybody who knows anything knows that "war room" is simply a euphemism for "bong parlor". the reason people are more productive is because they're all too baked to talk to one another, focusing their energies on programming instead (which, as everybody who knows anything knows, is really easy to do stoned).
the old cubicle system didn't allow for huge hookah-parties, thereby forcing employees/programmers to smoke out of their own small pieces, which didn't really get them that baked, just enough that they couldn't concentrate on anything anymore.
as a side note, picking the music is never difficult in a bong parlor-- no matter what you pick, everybody will start bobbing along to the groove and saying, "dude this is pretty sweet. what is it?".
love,
grizzo
www.grizzo.com
it's 100% grizzo
grizzo: totally insecure, but very convenient.
We've got a wee micro company, in an industrial unit converted into a nice little open plan office. All the furniture is in a big loop and it can be very productive having everybody in the same space to bounce ideas off and go for mad creative and production drives.
But remember kids, headphones save lives!
"If IE is 'just a web browser' then emacs is 'just a text editor'."
i've worked in lots of rooms where the idea was "let's get everyone who's working on this project into 1 room so they can all work together easily" -it was nice when you had a question, you could just shout it out. but you're interrupted so often by other people's phones ringing or their conversations that i think i ended up less productive. if you're put into one of those big offices, you'd better be able to tune out background noise easily. then again, that's probably pretty much the same w/ a floor full of cubicles.
it's a nice way to create a feeling of working as a team, but i think that instant messaging & lunches together or something like that works just as well.
I wouldn't call it _too_ condescending. They've since done similar studies on other groups (mentally disturbed patients, adults in offices, etc.) and found similarly strong but not conclusive results.
I suspect it all sounds too touchy-feely new-agey for most organisations to paint their walls pink (or "rose") as a means of increased happiness/productivity. In fact, businesses in general tend to mistrust new and substantially different ideas about how they should be working. Ergonomics, colours for moods, war rooms, flex hours; and most of us are still working 8-5, M-F (theoretically!) in cube farms not much different from the secretarial pools of the 1940s.
As a corollorary, it's easy and happy to experiment on kids, because it's just as easy to dismiss important results as, "well that wouldn't work in the REAL world!"
Sorry--this is all off on a tangent. Nonetheless, business doesn't like to change.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
So forgive my ignorance of the terminology, what exactly is a War Room layout anyways?
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
"Can't we all just get along?"
Nope. Not in a capitalist economy. Capitalism implies (hell, it defines!) competition, conflict, and 'only the strong survive.' Competing agencies getting along is anathema to capitalism.
Sad, ain't it?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It works because workers surf/pr0n/slack less. If your boss could just move his eyes over and see you were reading slashdot when it was crunch-time, you'd be in big trouble, hence you work more instead of surfing. Not to mention the people that look at pr0n behind their closed office doors.
Ours is a generation that likes to surf and take lots of 'mini-breaks' when we are working by ourselves.
Having your boss sitting with you constantly changes the workhabits to create better productivity.
I'm not saying everyone does it, but I'm sure you have people at your office doing it, and 'war-rooms' would make them more productive...
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
That would be the big reason, IMO, for these findings.
Writing this as I am from a 8x10 cube right now, I can tell you that if I was in the same room with other people that worked on this code and could just shout out questions to them I would be a lot more productive.
Instead, I might spend a substantially longer time thrashing through the problem myself. Or when I do resort to tracking someone down, it's a lot harder to find them in this maze of cubicles. Sometimes I can spend half a day on and off just trying to find one guy.
-- dR.fuZZo
They never did make that goal, or so it would seem. They appeared to be at war not with other computer sellers but the customers.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Have any of you actually seen or worked in a War Room? 99% of the time what a War Room is is an ex-conference room with 20 programmers shoved in there each with 3 feet of desk space and enough room to push their chairback and shove by their co-workers to go to the bathroom. (Obviously that's the bad end of the spectrum :) Your productivity may be higher but at what price? You have no privacy, you have to deal constantly with the personal (eating, hygene, social) issues of your fellow employees and the lack of your own space lowers your sense of value to the company.
Higher productivity in the shortrun doesn't make up for the higher stress and loss of company loyalty in the long run.
-Zane
This sig is worse than my last.
...Until the web designer decided his Super Soaker was more effective than our nerf weapons.
He chased one programmer into the server room. This resulted in an entire rack filled with fried boards.
So, it might be effective... as long as general stupidity is taken into consideration.
I telecommute and we use IRC as our war room. It works great 'cause I can tune in and out w/o hassle.
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>"Can't we all just get along?"
Nope. Not in a capitalist economy. Capitalism implies (hell, it defines!) competition, conflict, and 'only the strong survive.' Competing agencies getting along is anathema to capitalism.
Bull. Capitalism is NOT "only the strong survive," and "getting along" is NOT "anathema to capitalism." Capitalism is freedom; often players in a capitalist economy specialize and then work together, because they are free to do so and it is to their benefit.
Sad, ain't it?
Slurs and misunderstanding sure are.
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I had one "war room" development experience. Not sure if was the company's idea or Anderson consulting.
No cubicles, no dividers, and no monitors that faced into walls or corners. Everything was public and open to inspection at all times. At first, the lack of privacy was maddening. Even if you had time to surf for porn, you wouldn't dare. The noise was a problem, but I found that you quickly adapted. Most people were pissed to fuming at the beginning but this passed.
The most amazing thing was the teaming that went on. You would think this sort of forced teaming wouldn't work, but it did. Programmers that normally played their hands close to the deck became show offs. Spontaneous groups would form for discussion or demos or to show off some nice coding tricks. By simply removing cubicles, a totally different dynamic was created!
I now work alone much of the time and I miss my "war room" days. Maybe more companies will follow if the productivity claims are proven. Maybe in the future, programmers will be placed in open glass enclosures to be shown off during company tours. As long as those touring are advised to keep their hands away from the programmers, there should be little injury. Most programmers might be surprised that they would actually thrive in a fishbowl of an environment. I know I was.
But it's a repeated prisoner's dilemma game, every moment, as long as you both are working. In other words, if you decide to start goofing off, and your partner decides to work, he gets to change his mind as soon as he sees you slacking.
Sure, when you play PD once, there's no reason not to defect. If you play a thousand times against the same player, on the other hand, defecting even once is dangerous.
Of course, it breaks down a little... in PD, if you both defect, you both lose. In real life, if you both goof off, but not so long that you delay the project, you feel like you've both won.
No bad habits... and you advocate sending them to get certifications?
I'm sorry but most certification programs do nothing but teach people bad habits. Asside from Cisco's, very few of them deal with real world scenarios that a typical admin will experience. And a certification is not experience... its nothing but a bit of fact learning and memorization for things that will prolly not ever get used much in the real world.
A Certifcation doesn't show a desire to stay current, it shows a desire to pad one's salary.
Bring in young admins who are eager and smart. Its that simple. They needs certifications to prove they are smart... simple lay out a couple of problems (some of which have nothing to do with computers) and ask them how they would solve them.
Keep code isolated? Where do you work? In the real world lots of people touch other people's code because thats the only way its ever going to work. Source control is a wonderous thing... learn it.
--- I do not moderate.
finally, someone who supports my movement away from cubes.
I have probally been a lucky guy. All the companies I have worked for (for the most part) have been of the 'war room' mentality
Actually @home (Comcast division) was the one that started out NOT as a WarRoom. It was cubicle world, and i'll tell you .. productivity was horrible. (nothing like having absolute privace when you want to play a little quake eh ?) but I moved to the web side, and that was like a bullpen. It was great. If I was having a code problem - I just had to say 'HEY!' and someone might have an answer.
C.H.I.M.P's abounded, so we might not even have to look away from our screens. Pr0n surfing, and goofing off was not activly discouraged, but when all your companions are busting a$$ to meet deadline - you feel a LOT more guilty looking at e-bay, (or slashdotting i suppose *grin*)
at the contractors im working with now (for the new blackanddecker.com site), its a low cubicle wall place .. in nice ordly rows, with lots of caffinated beverages for free in the kitchen. Its a more-or-less war room environment. There are tv's here, and people talk to each other more readily. (The graphics part of the company was busily setting up a slot car track about 30 mins ago .. smelled of Ozone galore !) However, in the last week (of crunch time) i have probally worked 60+ hours with this site .. and honestly .. its been a HELL of a lot easier to do so, than if i was stairing at the grey fabric covered walls of a cube.
Last week (admist a spontanious poll of how many people had a sock monkey as a kid - so far its 28 vs 20 .. close race - 2 voted "what the hell is a sock monkey", prompting for some RATHER interesting drawings on the 'warboard' )
we were here untill midnight (with some chineese food as fortification.) Much easier, and actually kind of FUN. Although I kinda glad that im not expected to do that it every day.
I'm all for the war room, sides .. its easier to shoot your boss with a nerfball when you can see him all the time.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
How much of this alleged increased productivity was simply due to the Hawthorne Effect?
Researchers many years ago at a GE plant in Hawthorne, England wanted to demonstrate the effect of improved lighting. So they increased lighting levels, and lo, productivity went up.
The problem came during the check-back when they lowered lighting levels to the original lux. Productivity went up even further!
It turns out the Heizenberg's uncertainty principle applies to people as well: If you measure and watch something, people react to the closer attention.
I worked with two other people in a "mega cube" (with 6' high permenant "walls"). We dubbed it the "Playpen". The company firmly believed in giving people the resources they needed to do our jobs, so we had:
1) A very large whiteboard on one wall - with no furnature in front of it.
2) A spare computer and desk for "guests" to use during technical discussions (also used as a second terminal for the residents if they needed to run something that took a lot of resources)
3) It was a corner office in a tall office building, so it had an awesome view
4) Each person had their own phone
5) Nice workstations with 21" monitors
6) A comfortable "poof chair" (it is sort of a "full body" bean bag)
7) A shared bookshelf, so that you could borrow each other's books.
8) A collection of office toys, including a rubber-band powered plane (OSHA wouldn't have liked us flying that in the cube; too bad) and a bat suspended from the ceiling (it claimed to have a "soothing motion" - it didn't).
It worked VERY well since the three of us that shared the office all worked on the same projects at the same time. This environment was easily the most productive environment I've worked in.
People have mentioned "noise", though. It was true that music could be an issue. I recommend that companies buy GOOD headphones for every employee - a pair of $200 headphones can sound better than a $1000 set of speakers; once everyone has a set of these, you won't be able to pay them to listen to music on crappy computer speakers. The headphones should allow outside sound in and have at least 25' of cord (use an extension if you must).
As for ringing phones, that WAS annoying! It wasn't too bad, though, because we also had a "mini room" (actually two spare offices) across the hall. These rooms were used when people needed to have a long phone conversation, as they could go in and shut the door. This also gave some privacy. It was considered rude to talk for hours in the megacube, unless you were talking to everyone else there.
The furnature consisted of whatever we could dig up. I would recommend nice desks (single piece, not a U or L shaped desk) with LOTS of small tables. The ones that we had were 3' by 3' tables that could be configured however we wanted. If you wanted a "L" desk, you just grabbed three of these and put them on the left of your desk. I actually had a wrap-around desk build out of these. The nice thing is that you can reconfigure your space as appropriate for your work. We could, for instance, build a conference table in the middle of the room in a matter of minutes. All those nice "executive" desks really fall short in the ability to adjust to the work environment - they are nice for people who crave status symbols, but not for many others.
As you can see, though, this didn't save the company any money. The three of us had about twice the space we would have had if we lived in cubes. Not many companies could justify buying a poof chair for a space like this. Most environments I've worked in refuse to buy the most modern workstations for programmers, and 21" monitors are, sadly, rare. But, we were much more productive and I believe that our space and equipment cost less than additional employees would have.
I would also say that some of the positives of this environment came accidently. For instance, the company didn't think that being cheap on a bookshelf would increase productivity, but it did!
Perhaps it doubles productivity, but how sustainable is that productivity? Burn out is an important thing to avoid. Also, how high is the quality of what these people are doing? Writing twice as many lines of code does _not_ mean you are twice as productive, if you end up with tons of bugs as a result.
Pushing people do do more and to work longer and get things done faster is not the best way to get a productive work enviornment.
Sometimes it is really, really nice to be able to retreat into the confines of your cube and smash out some work. Having to live in the immediate presence of your coworkers may make you get a lot more done, but in my experience it has always made me much more edgy. Sometimes I need to just get away from the others and pound out the code. Having to endure other people's eyes on me all the time gets to me eventually.
OK, maybe instead of 'defines...', I should have said 'is de facto...'
I'm afraid that I don't believe it, though. Capitalism invariably degenerates into economic head-butting. Companies that work together, only do so to compete more aggressively against the competition. Intel and MS, for instance have worked together for years because they don't directly compete, but rather complement each other; and they've leveraged that collaboration to keep the upper edge. How many Alphas running OS/2 were sold in 1995-1997? (when the agreement was at its strongest, and also when those competing companies were producing very viable consumer products)
You may not agree, but that's how I see it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I must admit that sounds interesting. I just need to go to work for a company that has more than just me as the programmer.
I love working in an environment that includes other people next to or nearby. Where you can just ask a question out loud at normal volume levels and have somebody answer it vs. having to walk through a maze, schedule a meeting, or call a telecommuter at home.
It's all about instant communication. You need to tell somebody something, they're right there. You need to go over some specs, you give yourself a good shove and slide your chair over. How can that NOT be more productive that isolation.
When everybody is nearby it also turns into somewhat of a competition. I did 1200 lines today, how much did you do? I just fragged my 34th bug of the day.
You seem to be mixing up hetero and homo here.
You mean homogeneous network, and you're wrong. Unless you're Microsoft, (And even if you are in some cases) there will be at least two platforms you're aiming at: Apple and Win32.
Within Win32, you need to do QA on at least four platforms: Windows95, Windows98, NT4.0 and Win2000. If you're a *nix software shop, you'll need at least four of the following: Irix, Tru/64, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, OS/X, QNX or BeOS.
And I agree with the previous poster; Certs show nothing and teach little. On the other hand, experience is something you can't pay enough for. When the raid on the fileserver starts to go, do you want a MCSE who barely knows how it works and has to spend forty minutes in the Knowledge base and manuals to deal with it, and then has to run to another tech to double check, or the uncertified guy who has seen the problem before and could deal with it on the spot??
.sig: Now legally binding!
.. productivity. I mean I'd love to work someplace that had a whore room! I' never go home.
what??
oh WAR room. nevermind.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
um - no Solaris? You might want to include the #1 Unix. (#1 not be technical merit, of course! let's not go *there*, but let's not forget this clearly important species)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
here's a conference paper that has some of the ideas of the study...it is not merely limited to programmers though, but it is relevant and written by one of the authors.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
What's interesting is that another rather sophisticated software development book, Software Project Survival Guide by McConnell says that one or two person offices are much better than more open, less private cube farms. He cites "After 15 Years," an essay by Tom DeMArco and Timothy Lister, that was published in the book Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. They claim that workers who work in the top 25% of environments are 2.5 times more prodcutive than those in the bottom 25%. Maybe the addition of being in extremely close contact is enough to overcome the distractions.
I'd like to see more research. Take the same team, put them in cubes, offices, and war rooms, and see how they do. It strikes me as entirely possible that the practices they talk about in the article as only being possible in "extreme collocation" are in fact applicable to any development team. Thus, the real factor is the implementation of software development best practices, and not the work environment. And there's plenty of studies that show good software process to be helpful, so it's not surprising that there was a big jump in productivity.
Well, I'm off to do some software process, by myself in my office. Gotta get those requirements written down...
Walt
Sorry, but good programmers who spend 1/10 of their day coding will outperform average programmers who spend 9/10 of their day coding every time. The way to increase productivity is to hire good programmers and give them the work environment to keep them there. The manager's job is to get the bullshit out of the way so the programmer can focus on what she does best. All the rest is touchy-feely nonsense.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Not to mention keystroke monitors, hidden microphones, and the random execution of anyone caught surfing inappropriate websites.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
You may not agree, but that's how I see it.
You stated your position a little more reasonably; and I more or less agree with the content of your statement, but not the sentiment. You think that competition is a bad thing; I think it is a good thing.
With what would you replace competition? Who knows so much that they can pick the correct product/strategy/etc. at the outset? And are people so homogenous that they would be happy with a pre-ordained choice? Or are you thinking of some method of having choices in similar products somehow without competition?
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Having worked in several very fast-paced projects (mostly in .com startups) this has definitely proven to be very effective. IMHO, it all comes down to communication.
...) and very quick latency.
In a war room, direct interpersonal communication is easily available at all times. Advantages compared to technology aided communication of any kind are the very high bandwidth of communication (tone, body language,
Since people are in the same room most of the time, communication is always a multicast to all people related to the project. Using headphones, people that don't want to be disturbed can "filter" out such multicasts.
Sitting next to each other also makes social contacts very easy. People get to know each other. After a short while, they also feel a team spirit which shows in toys, t-shirts and common habits.
From my personal experience I can say that war rooms not only improve productivity, but make work a lot more fun!
Hi,
We just (end of October), came out of a 2 month War Room based project. Normally we live in lil gray cubes. We had a hell of a schedule - 2 months to build a meta-search engine for prices of Books, Music and Video, that used a commercial data source for book music and video data, and dynamic scrapers to get prices.
Three of us went into the conference room, and we got it done on schedule (Books, Music and Movies)
Why ?
I don't think I could work in one of these 365 days a year - and I suspect that being THE SOLE War Room was kind of ego-boosting - if everyone was in one, who knows.
Also, you really have to be involved in a tight project, with the ability to tell anyone coming into the room to f*ck off if it disrupts you or is not relevant to the project. In a normal multi-person office, the day to day interrupts can drive multiple occupants mad...
Winton
p.s. There is also a similar article in the New Yorker this month (page 60, Dec 11 Issue).
Competition (between companies) isn't a problem. Cooperation (aka collusion) is a problem.
Competition gives you faster hardware, low-cost bandwidth, cheap long-distance service, and other nice things.
Cooperation/Collusion gives you MSFT OEM licensing agreements, the MPAA, the RIAA, price-fixing, etc. etc.
If I read swordgeek right, he's saying the same thing.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
We have the same type of environment and we have a custom MP3 Jukebox that everyone logs into to queu up their songs. Seems to please everyone.
The IBM Santa Teresa report 25 years ago showed the right way to build offices for software developers: private offices with a door and window. They need to be near common areas for meetings. This was later supported by Peopleware.
The big problem with the Santa Teresa design is that it is an optimal solution. Since no brain power goes into finding better solutions, it all goes into finding excuses for not implementing it.
These war rooms were only compared to "traditional offices", ie those dreaded cubicles.
This article also used an oxymoron: "private cubicle".
I've seen a lot of mention of the use of headphones as a way of combating distracting noise with music.
The problem with this, as outlined in Peopleware is that music engages the creative centers of the brain, resulting in work that is measurably less creative than if the work was conducted in a quiet environment.
My feeling with war rooms is that it is likely they work for short term projects where the quality and creativity of the result is not that important. Otherwise they are inappropriate.
This saved them many hours of coding the rest of the class had to sweat through, yet in the end their programs looked different enough to qualify as individual programs(at UNM you are not allowed to work on programs in groups in most CS classes) because they implemented the psuedocode separately.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
(That's What He Said.)
If I read swordgeek right, he's saying the same thing.
Then he's saying it poorly, or in a way that I'm failing to understand.
I agree with what you said. Unfortunately, the government during the FDR period rigged the laws of this land to favor collusion, condone monopoly, create and legitimize cartels, and weight things towards large interests in the name of "stability."
I would prefer a system that favors many smaller competitors, rather than a few large MegaCorps. I.e., I would prefer real capitalism to the government-by-pressure-group system that we currently have.
Along those lines, I would prefer the end of government-created and sustained monopolies, the busting up of cartels (like the banking industry), the limiting of patents and copyrights to shorter amounts of time as they once were, and either the inclusion of the "corporate death penalty" in law enforcement (i.e., corporations obey the same laws real people do) or the end of the corporation as we know it. Corporations used to be very special things, set up by the U.S. Congress and granted special legal status and exemptions. The Postal Service, for example. Private business was confined to being companies, not corporations.
This day of government licensing of all activity and "public-private partnerships" is really detrimental to capitalism, to our culture, and to our system of governance (a federal republic -- which is neither a democracy or a corporate state).
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Do not all go out together for a TexMex lunch.
Well I worked in both environments and I can say one thing. For high demand, high production work, war rooms are the "only good one". But your boss should be on it... Or else it is not a war room but a barrack. Right now I'm working in war room "version 2". A not so big room (we're really stuffed here) with ten people and 15 computers. There is also the "no man's land" where all servers are located. You only enter there in case of trouble, maintenance "in situ" or to install something new. 24 hours a day there is always someone here. Most of us have computers at home and mobiles. This allows us to hold three ISP structures and a series of several other tasks for the University we work.
Our team is the best and most tighted together among all here. We passed over crises, problems of different kinds and till now many "old guards" are still working here, while they "officially" already left their job. Most decisions are considered and weighted by the team and only then a decision is taken. Frankly, we don't have "soldiers" here. There is only one trouble - music. Tastes are so different that it gets some conflicts here.
I should note that this team is a hallmark around here. While not being the biggest ISP, we are the most influential in terms of methods and technologies. One of the biggest ISPs is made mostly of our "old guards". And this structure has proved to be the best. The examples of "cubicle" schemes on this fiels and which I work with, had all failed. Specially due to the fact that there was no normal communication schemes between the boss and you.
In a work that demands the minimum of failures possible, the boss should not only be in contact with the team but also be an effective member of it. Yeah it is hard for some, any private/confidential talk is nearly known by all. But we are also decisiomakers so it does not make a big difference. It may also look hard to divide work between business deals and technical tasks. But this brings decisionmaking into a more strightforward position. The boss knows things as a captain should know the battlefield. This is very fundamental under the intensity of some tasks we have.
Good project teams = better productivity, and providing an environment where good teams quickly flourish, and bad teams quickly fall apart is the best way to ensure you have good teams.
Have a team go back to their respective cubes/offices/whatever after every meeting, and you can only judge at meetings.
Have the team in their own war-room, and you quickly know who's not a player.
A few months back, my manager told me a story.
There was once an office manager for a medium sized company. Productivity was lagging, so it came down to him to help the problem. He decided it was time to change the lightbulbs. Changing the lightbulbs up 10 watts increased productivity 20% "Wow!" thought the manager. "What an increibly increase for just lightbulbs!"
So he decided to do it again. Up another 10 watts. Another 5% increase! "Excellent. By upping the wattages on the bulbs, i've gotten higher productivity." He tried it again, another 5 watts. Another 2% increase, but people were complaining about the lights. So he took it down those 5 watts. Yet another 2% increase in productivity.
Why?
It has nothing to do with the lights, it's the change. People need an engaging changing environment so that they do become stale, and can remain productive. War rooms probably provide that sort of dynamic environment, but most likely at the cost of high stress.
Maybe they should look into new light bulbs instead.
--jay
Too bad you could not put ALL the phones in there. Any ring is anoying. When will people stop using those stupid things except for emergencies? I hate it when people reach out and grab my attention like that. Even the awful Outlook, which interupts my typing, is better than the dying bird sound the phone makes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, let me try again here. You're both sort of getting what I mean, and at the same time, not quite. (I take full blame for not explaining myself clearly. :-)
Competition per se is a good thing, on the whole. However, it's fairly ruthless--companies (or individuals) go up against one another, and in the end someone wins and someone loses.
The best way to become a stronger competitor is to ally yourself with someone else. In other words (ironically enough), Competition leads to collusion.
At this point I should probably point out that I'm posting from Canada, which is definitely less of a free-enterprise capitalist country than the US is. That undoubtedly colours my opinions in some manner.
Also, I don't claim to be absolutely right about this, although I do believe it. Of course, I also think that all economic and political systems are inherently unstable, and won't last more than about a century at a time, so what do I know?
It's been an interesting discussion at any rate.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
All political systems ARE inherently unstable. Dictatorships go broke and destroy themselves at the top via corruption and power struggles. Democracies last until the people vote themselves money. :)
The Byzantine Empire lasted 800 years with the same economic system, though; they were really strict about how money was to be handled. The penalty for debasing the currency (shaving gold coins in those days) was to have a hand cut off. Their currency was accepted the world over, even after the fall of their civilization.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Note that I said 8-5, M-F _theoretically_. I was just suggesting that such things as flex hours and 4x10 M-R hours still weren't really common despite the fact that they've been about to take off RSN.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban