Designing for Teams

Business has changed dramatically over the past few years. Market pressures and a focus on creating value require innovative ways of working. Companies are realigning, reevaluating and reengineering their organizations while investing billions in people and technology.

With business moving at warp speed, companies must increase the speed of their processes for developing products and services. At the same time, these products and services are becoming more expensive and complex.

Today’s employees have high expectations for the workplace. Work/life balance and the quality of the work environment are more important than ever.

Recent surveys by the U.S.-based think tank Net Future Institute revealed that 30 percent of the respondents said the main reason they stay with an organization is the environment, which includes management, coworkers and culture.

Meanwhile, only 25 percent of surveyed respondents cited salary as the impetus for staying. Employees obviously place tremendous value on their work environment.

Visionary companies are using the workplace to reinforce their brands and to convey the message that people are their greatest resource.

In software development teams, for example, the specific product cycle has different space implications over time.

In the typical development cycle, people from many disciplines come together to identify needs, features, program parameters and other key project issues.

Product development groups need informal settings that accommodate group brainstorming in short, intense bursts. The team generates goals, timelines, diagrams, process maps, ideas and features displayed for all to see. A project "War Room" can be a valuable team space for this effort.

These multidisciplinary team members eventually disperse and return to their individual areas for heads-down work.

At this point, workspaces that allow for concentration become vital. During this phase, the project team often re-reconvenes for periodic project meetings to review progress and make new assignments.

Finally, during the deployment phase, there is often a need for more multidisciplinary team worksessions in which new members join the original team to develop a rollout strategy.

Once the project is complete, the team may stay together and move on to another assignment or, more likely, disband so individuals can join new project teams and repeat the entire process.

Understanding an organization’s work processes provides insight into the types of flexible spaces required to best support teams.

This type of functional profiling also informs:

• Appropriate ratios of collaborative space and support functions
• The right mix of open and enclosed spaces
• Best work station configurations
• A modular kit of spaces that allows for flexibility
• A flexible kit of furniture parts
• A menu of customizable elements that gives team members choices about the tools they need to be productive.

The result of an effective functional investigation can be a workplace that acts as a powerful tool. In such an environment, space is allocated by function, not title. It’s team-centered and process-driven, and it enables collaboration. The space leverages technology and accommodates multiple uses and users.

This is what makes the design process work. The greatest failures occur when management or the design team falls back into the "one size fits all" trap. One size never fits all in Dilbertville, and the same goes for team spaces.

In the early 1990s, the company’s leaders envisioned an office in Venice, Calif., made up entirely of unassigned team space. No one had dedicated workspace or equipment such as telephones or computers. The intent was to encourage collaboration and provide an environment where creative work could happen any time, any place.

"It was a bold experiment in creating the office of the future. There were no offices, no desks, no personal equipment … and no survivors," said Warren Berger in Wired magazine in February 1999.

The workplace of the future degenerated into turf wars, equipment hoarding, plummeting productivity, demoralized employees and internal chaos.

This was an audacious, well-intentioned attempt. Yet it was fatally flawed by a "one size fits all" design and the absence of functional profiling data that could have uncovered requirements not addressed by the unilateral design approach. This was an expensive lesson for the firm and others that tried the same approach.

By contrast, several striking examples show how team space design can enhance company productivity and employee satisfaction.

A global consumer products company was recently thrilled to learn that team spaces can pay off in a big way.

Faced with a severe space shortage, this company’s last resort was to move a new product development team into a converted executive dining room. The company simply could not provide the team with an adjacent block of offices and workspaces.

Much to the organization’s surprise, this unique space created a level of collaboration never before experienced by team members. The team was able to engineer a global product rollout that delivered the product to market four months earlier than in similar past efforts. The team attributes this amazing accomplishment to its collaborative work environment.

These types of results begin to quantify benefits intuitively known for years.

Team space is not the wave of the future — it’s the wave of the present. With the intense challenges facing companies, designing teamwork environments with the absolute best combinations of space, process and technology is critical.

How can a company get started? Take a fresh look at how, when and where the work gets done in the company. Ask employees what’s working, what’s not working and what’s missing for maximum satisfaction and peak performance. Hire consultants who have a proven track record with innovative team space design. Then let it rip.