Team Proximity

Why do certain teams work together effectively and consistently meet their deadlines while other teams struggle to attain project objectives? In a previous post, we discussed how personality types can help or hurt team interaction and explored the various personality types on our current project. However, other factors contribute to a team’s successes, such as the proximity of all the team members to one another. We explored our experiences on various projects and compared them to current literature on team proximity and arrangements.

Bringing employees closer: The effect of proximity on communication when teams function under time pressure. Chong et al. 2011

Findings: Proximity improves communication during high challenge time pressure or low hindrance time pressure, but no relationship otherwise (low challenge or high hindrance time pressure).

Definitions:

Proximity: Cognitive and affective abilities and willingness to share information (i.e. psychological proximity vs. distance proximity).
Challenge time pressure: Associated with fulfillment and tendency to succeed – effectively pushing toward an objective.
Hindrance time pressure: Hassles and constraints to goal achievement – problems pushing toward an objective.

Benefits of proximity:

1. Team awareness: Team members located near each other tend to have a stronger understanding of other members’ strengths, styles, moods than people farther away.

2. Communication effort: Easier to initiate conversations => more efficient.

3. Team identity: Team mindset of how “together” the team is।

Team awareness:

What is a good example of team awareness?

Molly: One article (Space Matters: Why is Startup Accelerator Space Important? Enrique Allen) suggests that open area work environments ‘reinforce culture’ and it also touches on awareness within team space। Although, it is something that takes time to perfect. In the Chong article, the author touches on when an open layout makes sense. To me, open space on an agile team help re-enforce collective knowledge of the code, team awareness, etc. It is because of open space that teams feel more inclined to be aware of the project and how their work fits into the bigger picture.

Rachel: One limitation of the above study (Chong et al., 2011) is that they were unable to collect data regarding team awareness. Having an open work space promotes an easy rapport and a definite awareness between team members. Further more - and this is also stated by Enrique Allen - with an open workspace, you have “extreme collaboration”. I can cite numerous instances where I have been discussing a problem with another colleague and someone else in the room happens to overhear the conversation and - voila! Instant solution. One of my favorite examples of team awareness and (unusual) collaboration occurs with Molly. Let’s say that I need to talk to LittleT - who just happens to be standing behind Molly (who is kitty-corner across the room) staring at a board. I can just peek over my computer at Molly and say in a relatively normal voice, “Molly”, and she will hear me. This is because Molly has some kind of ESP with regards to the sound of my voice. Very strange (and incredibly efficient).

Communication Effort:

Rachel: According to Chong et al., high hindrance situations often cause avoidance coping tactics to arise and unfortunately, proximity does not help to mediate these issues. My initial response to this finding was denial - shouldn’t close proximity make it harder to use avoidance techniques? And surely distance would make avoidance tactics easier to employ! However, according to Chong et al., there’s no correlation – team proximity has no apparent effect, negative or positive, on teams in stressful and time-pressured situations. Within the last year, I was on a team that was in a high hindrance time pressure situation. Sadly, our layout was somewhat like office space – although maybe not as “cubical-ish.” For this particular case, I think the findings in Chong (et al) are intertwined with the statements regarding workspace arrangements in the article by Sean Michael Kerner (Cubicles or open workspace: Here’s how to select the best plan for your shop). Maybe if we had to face each other instead of having cubical-like spaces, then communication would have been facilitated more easily, thus reducing the impact of the high hindrance situation. I would have spent less time walking around trying to figure out who was really focused and who was open to questions. This indicates how strongly communication effort and team awareness are tied together.

Molly: My previous project had four TWers working around a small round table while the client developers had cubicles. It seemed as if no client wanted to come into the room, to talk about our progress, learn and pair with us, etc. They felt like interaction was invasion of our space. This article (Cubicles or open workspace: Here’s how to select the best plan for your shop. Sean Michael Kerner) describes cubicles is quite comical... ‘a rat maze’. The article identifies nether as being better, but rather space should be allocated for the people, job at hand, goals, etc. From it, I think two points coincide well. In an open space team room, wall space becomes limited and collaboration increases tremendously. These two are tied together - because there is shared wall space collaboration becomes easier. In the small room with a round table, it was very easy to get the attention of the entire team. We were all well aware of the design of the codebase, communication occurring between our team and the client, and -in general- the project overall. I think that by using shared open, visible space the team became closer because of our efforts in how to utilize the space for the best of the entire team.

Team Identity:

We will touch on this in the next blog – from all of our points of view.