Where does your seat sit?

1-12-10 Another Day in the Cube
Originally uploaded by Patric Woessner

At work today, we had a bit of a chat about our physical work environment. Currently we've got an open plan setup happening, everyone faces into their corner of the workspace, and we've got space for a whiteboard. One of the issues with the current setup is that pair programming and code reviewing is a bit hard - trying to fit 2 people into a corner doesn't really work very well, and we want to start doing more code reviews to up the quality of our work.

I know that some people are big advocates of the 'everyone get's an office' idea, and have been reading Joel Spolsky's blog - particularly about office space. I think it'd be great to have my own office, but we don't really have the space, so we're trying to think about how we can work better in the space that we've got.

One idea is to have a large table that we all work at in the middle of the area, with whiteboards around the outside so we can draw and discuss ideas. Another possibility is to all work around the edge of the area, facing the wall, but not have anyone sitting in the corners - which will help with pairing and collaboration. A space would be reserved for a whiteboard, and we could wheel in another whiteboard in and out when we needed.

Anyway, hopefully over the next couple of months we can figure out a way to work better together, which may include a redesign of our physical work environment.

How do you work best with your team? Do you sit near each other? How does working remotely affect your collaboration?

Google Wave

We just used Google Wave at work today, tried to get a bit of collaboration going. It was my first time giving it a go, and I think the concept is pretty good. We've got a SharePoint site up for our project, but that doesn't really allow for real-time conversations. We're trying to get a feel the gaps in our project, so we can follow them up later.

I like the idea of post it notes and a whiteboard, but Wave keeps all the conversations in one spot, although I'm not sure if technology actually takes away from the collaboration process at this point - especially when we're all in a room together.

How do you collaborate? Have you given Wave a go?