Offices vs. Cubes For Developers?

k12boy asks: "The company I work for has just announced that we're going to move our corporate headquarters (locally, but to a new building) and our facilities folks are currently searching for the new space. My intuition tells me that the developers on my team would be a lot more productive if I could give them offices (even shared) instead of the cube space they currently have, but I don't have any data to back it up. Does anyone have a pointer to any studies that prove me right or wrong?" Studies aside, can anyone think of a time that programmers actuallly did work more happily or productively in cubicles? Might there be advantages to more open workspaces compared to closed office doors?

Comments

Re:cube farms!!

[madburn]

We used cubicle parts to make "pits". We created largish areas out of cubicle walls and made sure the entrance was rather small (not an entirely open side) and was not accessible from major traffic flow. Inside the pits we would have inner half-walls between every two or three developers. There was a large space in the center so nobody was too close to the other side. There were many advantages:

• kept marketing/sales/management out (mostly)
• allowed small developer groups to interact
• center space was good for ad hoc design sessions/updates/meetings/etc.
• built a good sense of team instead of a feeling of isolated drones

People wore headphones to do music and we avoided giving everyone their own phone, instead having shared phones. It was pretty productive.