take in stride: Effects of Office Environment on Software Developer’s Productivity

Şerif Çetiner

Informatics Institute, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Abstract. In a field study, programmers liken to artists considering their concentration on solving problems or creating new ideas. This deep involvement is also considered as “flow” mode by Tom Demarco [1]. Regarding this implication, programmers are closeted in buildings containing cubicles, offices or war rooms as new trend. In contrast, artists, which are other thought workers, are tolerated and also motivated to work in inspiring environments. In general, wee hours of the night, which is quiet and alone, is voted as the most productive period of the day among programmers. In this respect, companies are searching ways to keep programmers in office willingly. On the other hand, software development is highly collaborative process which contains and needs discussions, brainstorming and taking decisions. In this paper, merging quietness and collaboration in a working environment is discussed considering effects of physical comfort, environmental interruptions and human interactions on productivity.

Keywords: Office Environment, Software Developer’s Productivity

1 Introduction

Everybody dreams about private bosphorus view room as his/her office. In addition to this, well-chosen music playlist will be nice also. As developers we always desire this situation as pleasure. On the other hand, productivity, efficiency and creativity are never thought. In real life, these three concepts are the main issues of software companies. Although there are many factors that changes productivity, in this paper; effects of office environment is discussed. So, what is office environment or what an office environment consists of? Actually, all the stuff in an office that you can see or realize composes your office, including; lightning, air conditioning, noise, chairs, desks, windows, walls, your colleagues, office layout etc. In addition, there is a second discussion about what is productivity? Some evaluates it as producing dozens of line of codes, while others considering it creating innovative solutions. In this paper, productivity will be accepted as both of these ideas and effect of office environment on developer’s productivity will be discussed.

2 Productivity is Coding in Meditation

Most of the software bugs are released in periods when developers lose their attentions. In order to prevent this, concentration is the keyword for developers and programmers which are considered as “knowledge-workers” by Demarco. He also explains this situation as “flow” mode. Actually, beginning from the early stages, all developers realizes this meditation level of coding. The time flows without any interruption for hours while coding. Besides, coding productivity, this period is liken to artists inspiring times. In this point of view, knowledge-workers should be creative too. However, for artists and developers, getting into flow mode is not easy. Furthermore, it has a time consuming preparation period. Although it depends on individual himself, for average person it is 15-20 minutes long. Therefore, in order to keep knowledge workers in highly motivation of productivity and creativity, you should provide supportive office environment to them that aims to increasing flow periods without disturbing and help them to get in this mode.

3 Concepts of Office Environments Affecting Productivity

In this section, all productivity related concepts of office environment will be discussed considering its positive and negative effects.

3.1 Lighting

Although working in late nights is quite popular within developers, in general; a standard software company has working hours between 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. This period takes the all-day of a developer in a building. Therefore, a knowledge worker should reach his/her highest productive level between these hours. Actually, it is more possible than working in nights, because of biological reasons. According Prof. Doc. Mehmet Öz’s publication [2], human body produces melatonin hormone that keeps body in stable rhythm. This hormone is also known as darkness hormone because it is highly produced in night when sleeping. Sunlight stops the melatonin production and wakes and increases the body rhythm. He also suggests that walking under sunlight at midday in order to keep body awake. As you notice, locking people in a building without sunlight and providing bright lights to them do not keep them awake and productive. Therefore, companies should provide as much as possible day light to their employees. In contrast to some companies’ plate glass windows, software companies can be more productive by providing more windows for their office environments. Besides that, Prof. Öz says yellow light increases performance by 30%, while bright lights more effective on melatonin. As a result, even if getting sunlight is crucial, a company can try to provide yellow light in working hours while changing it to bright light at nights for overtime.

3.2 Colors in Action

We all know about color type since primary school. Color has magical effect on human nature. Each person may like different color; actually, loving a color does count on your productivity according to Doc. Architect Lerzan Aras [3]. However, since we have lots of workers in an office, it is not possible provide all desired colors. It is also proved that many-colored environments are distractive says Doc. Aras. Therefore, a company should decide a color that has a positive effect on productivity. In general, companies prefer white, yellow or light gray colors as wall surfaces. Those are exactly the unproductive colors. On the other hand, red and green tones are the colors of creativity. A software company might choose those colors for different offices in a building in order to increase workers enthusiasm.

3.3 Ventilation and Air-Conditioning

As software developers, we have crowded offices with many team mates. In addition to this, most of the offices do not have enough windows for ventilation. For instance, I am working in 100 mt² office with 60 people. It is so obvious that breathing for 2 hours such an office consumes all the oxygen that you need. While working you are not aware of this condition until reading a line of code 10 times without any sense, however, if you go outside and come back to your desk, you can easily feel that there is a warm and smelling air in the office. It is not hard to say that this air smother you. In our company, this situation is noticed by the management and a ventilation mechanism is built in our office. Since then, the number of breaks that people take dropped almost 40% in terms oxygen need.

Besides ventilation, air-conditioning is considered as a big issue for productivity. In Turkey, software developers work during all year except for two weeks. This working period contains all seasons. As a company you cannot say that our office is warm at summer and cold at winter. Even if people say we need cool space at summer and warm place at winter, it becomes a same temperature interval which is 23-26 °C. Although, there are opponent, this interval which is shown below is determined by Olli Seppanen[4].

Fig. 1. Temperature Effect on Performance

In this research, some companies’ performances are analyzed for different ambient temperatures. According to figure above, the performance decrement level is at minimum level around 25 °C. Hence, 25°C temperature seems to provide a productive office environment. On the other hand, since we have crowded offices in general, as a company you can try to keep your ambient slightly cooler than 25 °C, in case of ventilation problems, because in a crowded place ambient temperature will increase eventually.

3.4 Artists Need Comfort

In society, software developers are seemed as a person that sits on a chair in front of a monitor during all day. Actually, even if as a developer we do not like this likening, it is true. On the other hand, knowledge workers are also considered as artists, in such a way that creating things. So we are sitting on a chair for hours, and we are supposed to be creative, therefore we need comfortable environment. Furthermore, comfort is a humanistic need for body health. In addition to health issues, each person has a private comfort mentality. Some uses standard keyboards while some prefers ergonomic keyboards. It is possible to give similar examples such as mouse types to chairs. Those preferences can be originated from physical issues of human body. Besides, each individual has unique body anatomy, sitting on a chair during whole day affects body pain. Therefore, since you cannot supply a private chair for each employee, chairs should be highly configurable. So that, every employee can make his/her configuration to sit in comfort. In a field research [5] for configurable chairs’ effect on body pain, below figure is produced:

Fig. 2. Pain decrements after configuring chairs

In this figure above, there are two tables that show pre-intervention and post-intervention of adjustable chair usages. In the former table, almost all pain values starting from beginning of the day until end of the day. On the other hand, after adjustable chair usage with training, all mean values of body’s musculoskeletal pain decreases. Therefore, using adjustable chairs decreases pain and increases health status which eventually makes people comfortable. As a result, productivity also increases in comfortable places because of less health issues.

3.5 Privacy Effect

In general, people think programmers are antisocial individuals. On the contrary, everybody in software world knows software development is social activity that teams collaborate very much. Furthermore, we spend most of our times with our colleagues in crowded offices. There are always meeting, discussions and other interactive events. In this intensive tempo, as individuals, we need some privacy. Each person has a life outside the office. He/she may need to make calls or receive from his/her family or friends. In addition to this, some financial situations might be occurred that you need to talk with your bank agent by giving your private information. For all these situations, a company must provide a place that its employees can handle those kind of issues. On the other hand, privacy is not thing that you can provide giving public rooms. Some companies do not allow their employees to change their desktops. This rule includes forbidden family photographs on your desk. Taking this attitude costs company to lose huge number of employees.

In an examination room, there is no one that wants the teacher looking on your paper standing nearby you. Because you always make mistakes and don not want to be checked for all mistakes. Even you can forget things that you know very well. In an open office, there are similar situations that your team leader or manager watches you coding. Besides it destroys your flow mode, it makes you worse than ever. Therefore, even if it is not possible to give private rooms to your employees, you should provide some space that he/she can feel the owner of the desk. Even if you are owner of the company, you must accept that you are now in his/her territory and ask permission to talk. This manner makes your employees feel free and decreases the stress. By doing this creativity increases since stressful places are considered as enemy of creative ideas.

3.6 Noise or Silence

Noise is an interesting concept in terms of its effects on productivity. In clear, noise can be divided in two categories such as harmful and helpful. In an open office, sometimes you realize that there is a meaningless noise. Actually it is not. Each small group is discussing on a topic however, there are many of them. The point is there is nothing to discuss for you and you need to code your algorithm. Most of the developers listens music in this case they are blocking this “harmful noise”. However, according to Cornell Experiment mentioned in Peopleware [1], music does not allow person to reach his/her maximum productivity. It is claimed that human brain handles with regular activities on the left side, while creative processes and learning are done at right side. In addition to this, right side of the brain is also responsible for artistic behaviors such listening music. Therefore, if you are working on a solution that needs to give your all creativity and listening music, your brain try to handle both activities on right side which means there should be some sacrifice. As a result, listening music is not a solution to harmful noise. According to Dave Chaplin, noise effect on productivity is given as shown in the below figure named “Chaplin Productivity Graph”:

Fig. 3. Chaplin Productivity Graph

It might be difficult to say noise can be helpful in a working area. In software world, strange things are not rare. As a knowledge worker, information is so valuable. Companies spend lots of money to earn knowledge. In an information era, noise is the best transporter for knowledge. For instance, dealing with a bug can be annoying. Then, you ask someone for solution, and that teaches you a lot in a short time. However, sometimes it can take long time to reach answer. In an office, each person has his/her own background knowledge to know the solution. If he/she hears your question and answers, you and your friends around learns the solution at the same time. In such a way, a team saves time of learning new information. As a team culture, using this helpful noise is possible and valuable effort in terms of self-improvement. Companies should search ways of gaining such a culture for their employees.

4 Office Layouts

There are four common office layout types such as cubicles, open office, closed office and war room. Each type has its own advantages and disadvantages. Previous sections in this paper, effects are mentioned with office layout slightly. In this section, office layouts will be explained highly related with office environment concepts mentioned above.

4.1 Cubicles

Cubicles are designed to save place in an office and give a person some privacy. In above sections, the importance of privacy is mentioned. However, there are priorities between gained productivity levels in terms of office environment concepts. Besides, giving privacy should be provided in such a way that person would not hate. In below figure, cubicles are shown in a funny way but pointing the right issues.

Fig. 4. Cubicle as prison

It is obviously seen that, giving such privacy is similar to put a person in a prison. You have nothing to see but only a monitor. In addition to this, it is not seem that you are working as a team. In software companies it is accepted that team are considered as smallest units. Employee count is less important than well united teams. On the other hand, as seen in the above picture, cubicles contain people from various professions. There might be an assistant as your neighbor that has to arrange all phone calls. Therefore, cubicles are considered as old fashioned office layouts in these days.

4.2 Open Office

Open office is a kind of modern cubicle layout. There are lots of cubicles with shortened walls. Although it might be varying according company arrangement, similar to cubicles, teams might be separated to asunder cubicles. In the below photo, you can see a sample open office layout.

Fig. 5. Open Office Layout

Negative effects of open office layout are given below according to Zenstorming publishment which states that 90% of the studies reported these outcomes:

· Increased turnover

· Higher stress levels

· Higher blood pressure

· More interpersonal conflicts

· Higher levels of insecurity

· Higher noise levels which leads to:

─ Impaired concentration

─ Lower productivity

· Easier germ transmission

· Loss of personal identity

· Lower job satisfaction

4.3 Closed Office

Closed office layout is known as a private rooms. In Turkey, generally managers have their private offices. Indeed, closed offices are quiet, peaceful, comfortable and healthy. However, they are too expensive for a company to give a room to each developer. On the other hand, they are not manageble. Even two membered small teams needs to be managed. In order to provide management in closed offices, e-mail systems and phones are used to communicate. However, this communication is not enough for a software company. Actually this is why home offices are not preferrable by a company. Communication and land cost and time wasting are the main reasons for closed offices are not good enough for a company.

4.4 War Room

This concept is considered as the most productive way of developing software. The name of the concept is come from Winston Churcill’s room that he operated the army in a single room for 24 hours a day, seven days a week[6]. In this room, all information, tools, army members and anything else are ready for Churcill if he needs. An IT War Room, is a concept that provides everything a software development team needs. The sample view of a war room is given below:

Fig. 6. Meeting time in War Room

In this room, all team members and staff that they may need such as configuration specialist, white boards in order to draw and discuss algorithms. This unit in the room is dedicated to produce a product without considering working hours and humanistic needs such as comfort, privacy. Such an effort is calculated as a four times higher than standard productivity. According to Suresh Krishna the reasons of such a war room popularity is listed below:

· Even when the team is at the same location, cubicles are barriers

· We want to move away from the irony of sending e-mails for each small detail and then waiting for the reply

· Its the easiest way to see EVERYONE related to project in one room

· Asking a question is as simple as waving at someone ...

· It promotes more of an open culture and free communication

· Everyone can see the Product back-log

· Product Owner or Product Manager is available when ever needed

· Everyone can see the Current Stories running and also see the Alert Cards

· And finally the Continuous Integration Server for everyone to access and showing the build statistics of all modules

On the other hand, there is a very notable reason that war rooms are not chooses by all companies. The reason is that war room performance is not permanent. Employees can not perform such an effort for months. First, it is not healthy. Second, since every one has aprivate life and families, no one wants to work in such a tempo. Therefore, war rooms can be considered as short term solutions for companies.

5 Is Perfect Office Layout Possible?

All the discussion above shows us that every office type and each office environment concept has advantages and disadvantages on human productivity. Therefore, a perfect match does not seem to be possible. However, a well designed combination of all items can provide a highly productive work space for knowledge workers. Hence, it is needed to be determined what are the prior requirements of productivity. Below list can be considered as a suggestion to create a highly productive office environment.

· Working as a team

· Silent place that allows little helpful noise

· Providing privacy

· Minimum interruption

· Accelerated interaction

It is obvious that software teams are group of people that working together in a highly interactive way. Therefore, as a company you should separate this group up to 5 people from others. The best way is giving them a single room. In this room, there must be whiteboards in order to discuss problem solutions. Once a solution is produced, it should be remain on the board until it is applied to code. Therefore, there will be need to other boards. Another board will be used to keep assignments of team members and states of tasks. This will help team members and new comers to see who is responsible for his/her problem.

Silence is important, therefore, a company should provide earphones of high quality. They can be used to listen music or just isolation of any noise. Team members should also be warned by company to keep his/her cell phone in vibration mode. And public places should be provided to make phone calls or chatting with a friend.

Privacy is one of the most effective parameters of productivity. Each team member should has a desk and an adjustable chair. Bigger monitors can be effective in providing privacy. A developer should not be interrupted with any move in his/her sight. But, he/she can see his team mates without leaving his desk. This design is important to provide privacy and keeping in interaction.

The main aim is to keep developers in flow mode. In order to provide this, interruption count should be decreased. Based on flow mode, Dave Chaplin creates a sample visualization of interruptions during all day for a standard developer. The figure below shows the time wasting and reentrance of flow mode:

Fig. 7. Flow Mode Interruptions

As a result, in order to reduce interruption count, developers should close their e-mails and check them periodically. Telephone calls should be silent and incoming calls should be droped in computers monitor. Developers should not have to take all calls just in times.

Accelerated interaction is important. Team room is providing this. However, related teams and departments should be located smartly. Closer team locations is important. In a field research, it is calculated in terms of question-answer time versus minute/cost of a developer. It is claimed that a programmer costs about $2.10 per minute. Getting a question answered assumed as average 1 minute and a developer has almost 100 question per week. They argue that if you separate teams for long distances, a developer wastes time to reach the other and get back. If average time increases to 2 minutes per question, it is equal to lost of 100 x $2.10 per week. Another suggestion is to accelerate communication is central activities such as coffee machines, or smoking places such as balconies. It is proven that, such an approach keeps workers in interaction even if they are working in different departments. This communication breaks the walls between departmens of communication procedures.

6 Summary

In conclusion, office environment has a huge effect on knowledge workers productivity. All the well known companies in software world aims to interact their employees and keep them in their campuses. Therefore, developers desire to stay in office instead of ruling them out is the highest point of office environment effect on knowledge worker.