Mark Flowers

“Insist on understanding because a healthy process that can’t defend itself is a sign that you’ve forgotten what you believe.”

I think Rands nails it here:

“It’s an argument for common space that is not shared because these teams have work to do and don’t want a constant set of irrelevant interruptions. This is why I’m in favor of pod-like set-ups where teams working on similar technology and projects have their own enclosed space. I believe this is the type of set-up that encourages the most efficient forms of collaboration.”

The open office is only a positive if the interruptions it allows really are valuable. If the interruption is some random person walking by and coughing, all it is doing is grabbing your attention. But if the interuptions can be narrowed to only the people that are important to your work, then they have value, and are worth the loss of focus. Another benefit of having separated “pods” as he calls them is that they give the team a sense of ownership of the space they’re in so that they can use the space as they see fit to increase their productivity and not feel like they’re infringing on another teams space. (e.g. covering a wall with sticky notes that have vital shared information from the last meeting).

“Can you envision the intermediate steps to get there? Those steps need to be as stable as possible, and ideally not be huge stretches, but get you in the right direction.”

“But making it up as you go isn’t leadership – it’s gambling.”

Because I am a geek and enjoy playing board games.

I started using Sketch recently, and I’ve really enjoyed it because it feels like it is closer to the development work that I’m doing than using a photo editor. Also, the built-in export for retina is a bonus.