This week’s book learning is a part of series on “Brainstorming and Peer Pressure” from Quiet by Susan Cain.
“Coding war games” was an extensive research study that involved 600 developers from 92 companies. Each developer designed, coded and tested a program working in their own office. The results made for interesting study –
– The best outperformed the worst by 10:1 and the median by 2.5:1
– Attributes like years of experience, salary, time spent on programming etc had little correlation (in fact, programmers who sent in 0 defect work often spent less time on their programs)
– BUT, programmers of the same company more or less performed at the same level even if they never spoke to each other
So, the researchers dug in to understand what these companies did differently. The results, here, were illuminating –
– 62% of the best performers all said they had an acceptably private workspace
– 76% of the worst said people interrupted them needlessly
In short, top performers worked for companies that gave them control over space, physical environments and freedom from interruption.
Sketch by EB
We all know interruptions dramatically decrease productivity. But, on the other hand, we’ve had office design consultants push open plan office to increase group work and “brainstorming.”
If we produce our best work in privacy, how productive are we when we “brainstorm”? Coming up next week..
Here’s to ensuring we find quiet time to do our most productive work this week!
A Learning a Day 