Adventures in home working

Some of the best years of my working life were spent in an office environment I designed to promote collaborative work.  It had many of the characteristics of a “war room”.  With quiet areas around the sides, tables in the middle and loads of break-out areas, white-boards, flip charts and a design review/presentation area.  I described this environment in a previous post.  I have generally been frustrated at the lack of discussion about workspace design in the IT press, so I was pleased to come across this article that resonated strongly with my experience:

Recently, many companies in the software industry have been experimenting with putting teams of workers into “war rooms” to enhance communication and promote intense collaboration, explains Stephanie Teasley, an assistant research scientist in the U-M School of Information’s Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work.

Instead of toiling in separate cubicles, workers sit at wall-less workstations in one big, open room. The room is typically outfitted with central worktables, whiteboards and flip charts to facilitate group discussions. While companies expect benefits from such arrangements, workers sometimes balk at the idea, fearing they’ll sacrifice privacy and the quiet they need to concentrate on demanding tasks. The U-M researchers say their study is the first to closely examine the effects of what they call “radical collocation” on both productivity and worker satisfaction.

Teasley collaborated on the project with Mayuram Krishnan and Judith Olson of U-M and Lisa Covi, who was at U-M when the work was done but now is at Rutgers University. The group studied six software development teams at a major automobile company, all of which had little or no experience working in war room settings. The researchers evaluated the workers’ productivity using measures commonly used in software development; then they compared the war room teams’ scores with productivity data the company had collected on software development teams working in traditionally arranged offices. The researchers also interviewed the workers and had them fill out questionnaires at the beginning and end of the project. In addition, they made detailed observations of two teams—sitting in on meetings and conference calls, watching the teams solve various kinds of problems and photographing them in action.

Teams in the war room environments were more than twice as productive as similar teams at the same company working in traditional office settings. In a follow-up study of 11 more war room teams, productivity nearly doubled again, making the war room teams almost four times as productive as their counterparts in ordinary offices. The setting alone may not account for all of the productivity differences; teams working in the war rooms also used techniques designed to accelerate software development. However, those techniques could only be carried out by radically collocated teams, says Teasley.

The before-and-after questionnaires showed that workers liked working in the war rooms better than they expected to and were not as distracted by nearby colleagues as they thought they would be. In interviews, the workers said they learned to tune out distractions and tune in when something important was happening. Indeed, overhearing one another’s conversations and watching one another’s activities probably had a lot to do with the productivity surge, the researchers believe. When a worker was stuck on a software-coding problem, others passing by would stop and offer help. And when one team member was explaining something to another, others could overhear and interject clarifications and corrections. The privacy issue was resolved by having a few private cubicles, equipped with telephones and computers, available near the war rooms. Workers used these mainly for making personal phone calls, such as calling a bank to check on a loan or phoning a doctor’s office for medical test results.

“Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, for coordination, problem solving and learning,” says Teasley. “With the growing push for using technology to allow people to work in virtual teams, this study shows us the value of having seamless access to team members and helps us to envision how technology might best be used to support teams that cannot be radically collocated.”

This video shows some great integration between different information sources:

• Satellite imagery
• Low flying aircraft imagery
• Vector mapping data
• Local “yellow pages” type information

You can take this integrated data and share it as:

• Directions
• Blog posts to MSN Spaces

And they implied that a Win32/.net client is under development and you can image the sort of integration that that will have with GPS, Outlook etc.

Of course google maps has some similar features, what’s will be interesting about Virtual Earth is the integration and the thick client possibilities.

In this video we can see Microsoft Office Communicator in all it’s glory.  I particularly liked:

• the seamless escalation between collaboration modes, from IM to Phone, to Video, to Virtual Meeting
• the integration of presence and Outlook calendar
• the ability to easily search AD for a contact and instantly have all the same services available that you would have for a person on your buddy list
• the high levels of integration with Office,  ie all the features available where ever you see a persons name
• the fact that line of business apps are leveraging that same integration where ever you see a person as well (contextual collaboration)
• the federation to public infrastructure services, Yahoo, MSN and AOL
• the enterprise class security

of course this is just the beginning, this video shows some of the stuff that is on the horizon, particularly focussed on helping mitigate some of the concerns over the downsides of being always connected and the problems of information overload

I friend of mine has let me have a new video camera,  its a Polycom ViaVideo II and the quality and refresh rate is greatly improved compared to my ancient USB IBM Ultracam.  One more step towards reduced travelling.

As I work from home I tend to make sure I do my share of the housework.  My normal daily jobs include:

• tidying the bedrooms
• making the beds
• washing, drying and putting away the clothes

Well Debbie and I have been finding our respective daily tasks a bit of a grind, so on Friday we decided that we would swap jobs every weekend.  So this weekend I have been:

• making all of the meals
• setting the table
• clearing the table, washing up, drying and putting away the pots

it’s been a great success, I have loved not having to do my jobs, and really enjoyed my new weekend jobs.  By Sunday I had change the routine and made it a lot more organised and peaceful and had written up (stephie laminated for me) a crib sheet that tells me all of the kids favorite meals, vegetables, fruit, drinks etc, as with 4 kids  I am always forgetting  Hopefully a weeks break from them will mean I enjoy these tasks every weekend, as they say “a change is as good as a rest”.

This is a good interview, where Bill Gates describes Microsoft’s approach to the phone.  A few things struck me from the interview and other stuff I have read:

• Microsoft don’t make any money on Windows Mobile, but they seem committed to the market for the long term
• Microsoft know that it won’t be long before the phone is powerful enough to take advantage of its operating system.  At that point they believe they will then have a real advantage over the people who squeezed their operating systems into current generation phones.  Of course as soon as the phone is this powerful it will make a great platform for Linux as well.
• Microsoft are waiting for the phone to be powerful enough to disrupt the portable game console market,  at this point I suspect they will be ready to compete
• Microsoft will leverage their integrated innovation strategy
• The connected car is a huge market, this post talks about the potential
• The carriers, rather than the phone makers are a key route to market for Microsoft,  I guess that Microsoft with its robust strategy around content and rights management is well placed to woo the carriers
• Microsoft is to be commended for being clever enough to keep on investing is a loss making business, until such a time as they are in a position to disrupt the market leaders

I just realised that Grahams model ends up working very well for me:

2GB Desktop with 2*120GB disks  = 7 Seat 307 SW
1.5GB TC1100 Tablet PC = Ford Fiesta – this will have to go,  not at all the image to go with the Tablet
Treo 600 = Push bike
Nokia 6310i = Scooter

Here is a great discussion about device form factors by Graham.  I particularly liked the summary:

• Some people will use a big desktop with a big screen, because some people drive a Range Rover.
• Some people will use a titanium plated ultra-light, because some people drive a BMW Z3.
• Some people will utilise a standard laptop, because some people drive a Ford Mondeo.
• Some people will use a large form factor laptop, because some people drive a Renault Grand Scenic
• Some people will still use the device they have had for the last 10 years, because some people drive a vintage Mercedes sports car.

I am not sure what sort of car driver I am, using Graham’s Model, as I have a variety of different devices to suit the need, perhaps I am just one of those people who has a big garage, or in the UK a long drive (we fill our garages with junk)!  In fact I have a Peugeot 307SW  7 seater (4 kids) and a Ford Fiesta.

In this post I talked about my approach to time management.  Graham has this great story on his site that illustrates the same approach but much more eloquently!

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He asked the students if the jar was full.They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full; they agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things: your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions, things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter–like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else: The small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just filler.”

One of the students raised his hand and enquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”