Agile Workspaces

Tom Breur

16 July 2017

Agile workspaces and open office plans seem to coincide a lot. In fact, so much so, that they are often equated. I used to work for a company where they denoted Agile working methods that way. Unless you were physically located in the open space office plan, you weren’t part of an Agile team.

I myself was introduced to “flexible” (open) office spaces in 1996 when Interpolis in the Netherlands migrated from traditional to flexible office plans (“Het nieuwe werken”). I vividly remember how anxious employees were about the move. No longer your “own” desk, and with that came a dramatic reduction in the amount of paper files you could hang on to. Interestingly, when I returned there 10 years later as a consultant, the company was going through a reorg. I noticed how many employees were happy to consider a transition, but were reluctant that they’d have to revert back to traditional office space. That scenario was a clear deterrent and weighed negatively when they contemplated a (any) switch.

It is said that open plan offices were “invented” by Gaetamo Pesce who first applied this concept at Chiat/Day in 1994. That experiment drew a lot of attention at the time (e.g. this NYT article), but what few people seem to know is that this experiment didn’t last very long. In 1995 Chiat/Day moved (back) to conventional office housing again… (a historical account by Wired) So if they liked it so much at first, their love must have waned pretty quickly.

Part of the business case for open plan offices seems entirely legitimate. In many companies, on any given day there are structurally some 25-50% of employees not present. That means that you can “save” at least 25% of office space by making desks and chairs available on an “as needed” basis. At Interpolis, that number was estimated at 30% at the time, and they chose to reinvest the budget from shrinking floor space in more high-quality surroundings, albeit with less seats. To this day and age, I (still) find it one of the prettiest, and also most effective office spaces I have ever worked in.

As a side benefit, the flexible (open plan) office space is thought to facilitate cross-team collaboration as people will mingle more “organically”, simply as a function of availability of desk space. However, anyone who has worked in open plan offices for a while will have observed that most of us are creatures of habit. We tend to gravitate towards the same chair and area. Actively and deliberately “moving around” seems the exception, rather than the norm.

For the past 20 years, my own experience has been mixed (and I am clearly not the only one…). I have gained benefits from lowering the threshold to collaborate, but also suffered badly from ambient noise and distraction. There is a mounting body of evidence in support of productivity loss in open plan office spaces. For one thing, it takes getting used to, for all involved. Getting used to working with ambient noise, but also getting used to (collectively!) not creating too much ambient noise… The “collective” part is the rub: it takes only very few noisy colleagues to spoil the experience for all.

Research has shown that people are sick more often in open plan spaces, which may be attributed to viruses and bacteria spreading more easily. A meta-analysis on about 100 studies by Matthew Davis has shown considerable time losses, but there are several findings of lowered productivity, more interruptions, etc. This large study found lower productivity, some studies by as much as 66%. Given that nowadays 70% of people are said to work in open office spaces, these findings should be cause for concern.

Agile collaboration hinges on high bandwidth (i.e. face-to-face), readily available feedback. Open plan offices can provide that in spades. At the same time, there may be slots in your calendar where you want to concentrate. In those moments you will benefit from some isolation to avoid any distractions. My positive experiences at Interpolis were amplified because a wide diversity in work settings were always available. One-on-one sections, casual coffee corner/lounge settings, a private cubicle – with or without privacy, different size and style meeting rooms, etc. This range of options allows you the best of both worlds: interactivity when and how you want it. So if you plan to design an open office plan, make sure it has the full range of work options available, and enough of each, so that everyone can get their work done.