Single-person Office

When I wrote the Dawn of War Skirmish AI, my producer afforded me a single-person office. In that situation, it felt perfect: I was the only programmer on the AI, and it was relatively separated from the other tasks of the team, allowing me to focus intensely on my task at hand. Mostly during the day, I would leave my door open for anyone who had questions / comments; when I needed to concentrate and didn’t want any interruptions, I would close the door and code away. It was the ultimate “zone”.

The obvious downside to this is that I was cut off from the day-to-day workings of the team, and most developers don’t have the luxury of an enclosed system such as a Skirmish AI.

Open Office Formation 1

After working on DoW, I reverted back to the open floor plan, and immediately disliked it. The formation looked similar to this:

There are obvious advantages to this — it saves space, and you can put teams that work closely together in each formation — communication is much better in this layout. But there are also some glaring disadvantages:

1) It’s both visually and aurally distracting. You can hear everything around you and you’re literally watching your three compadres working, so when they get up, it distracts you.

2) Communication is still not ideal. Sure, you can chat with your co-workers, but first, everyone in that 4 person formation can hear what you’re saying, and second, if you needed an opinion or help, they would need to get up and walk around to see anything.

Open Office Formation 2:

Today, Klei works in an open floor plan layout. We place our desks in a circular formation such as the following:

In this formation, communication is much improved, and far less distracting. When one person on the team needs to talk to another, they simply turn their chairs around and roll over. This allows the developers to discuss things easily, and without distracting the other 2 developers. It also makes it far easier for a 3 or 4 person discussion. Finally, the actual communication is more effective — as soon as I turn around, I can see what the other person is talking about, right on their monitor.

This formation is also very effective (if not more so) in a four-occupancy office. It has all the advantages of an office, and improves communication.

The Roving Desk Solution

Most companies I know now work with desks on wheels. I’m a big believer of trying different formations out, and if they don’t work — change it! For example, at Klei, we have a six person team, all of whom work together on a daily basis. So we’re currently in an asymmetrical, slightly awkward looking circular formation. Taking it to an extreme, some companies (I believe HotHead and certain departments of Yahoo!) have everyone on laptops and roving desks, making it even easier to move around.