How to manage noise in teams room?

Question

Very often, my coworkers engage in silly discussions about general topics not related to the work making a lot of noise in the team's room. This distracts all the developers in the room, making them lose focus and productivity.

I know that socializing and exchanging general information in the work is healthy.... But I think too much of it isn't good at all.

So, how to handle this situation?

• Should the boss rule over and force every one to be quiet in the working room?
• Should we have a separate time (maybe lunch) when it is allowed to chat?
• Have you experienced that in your work? Was it solved? How?

Do you guys have any creative idea on how to manage this situation like a real leader should do?

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Unfortunately, private rooms is not an option!

Answer 1

You should have the coffee room nearby. It helps!

If it is in a separate room from your open-space, all "socialization' activities can take place there.

That, plus the fact that your n+1 and n+2 (in term of hierarchy: your boss and the boss of your boss) are often nearby in the same open-space can help a lot to keep the idle chat at a reasonable level.

"Prohibition" is a strong word. But whenever a general conversation takes too much time and makes too much noise, you should invite them to continue in front of the coffee machine ;) After one or two "invitations", they should take the hint.
By "general" conversation, I mean of course any conversation not directly related to work. They can begin in the open-space, but they should not last long, or they should go on elsewhere.

Answer 2

Allow them to expense a good pair of noise canceling headphones. If you're not allowed to socialize you're going to lose good developers, and that costs money as well.

Answer 3

Anything imposed from above is likely to be counterproductive. If people are finding they're getting distracted, they should raise it with their peers - the boss getting involved will just create bad feeling.

Those people who don't want to be distracted by chatter could listen to music - or just have noise-cancelling headphones without necessarily replacing the talking with anything else. I'd hope that just asking colleagues to keep the noise down a bit would be enough though.

What are your tea/coffee arrangements like? If people have a separate place to go when they want to chat, that can help a lot.

Answer 4

The idea is to create the culture "let's talk in the coffee room". Maybe you can start some random conversations and always finish it in the coffee room, maybe with the time it becomes automatic.

Answer 5

A good pair of closed-back or canal headphones are probably the way to go. You can listen to what you like without distraction at volume levels that won't damage your hearing and also without annoying anyone around you.

HeadphoneReviews.org have a good selection wizard and lots of reviews.

Maybe headphones should be added to the Programmer's Bill Of Rights?

Answer 6

We've had this problem at work, as well as issues with people from outside development coming for a "quick question" to a developer and ending up holding a mini-conference right at their desk.

I can tell you what didn't work:

• Asking the coworkers to talk less. This just creates resentment. Besides, some people need the conversation to focus, so you're merely shifting the problem, even if you succeed.
• Asking the boss to tell the coworkers to talk less. This creates more resentment.
• Headphones, because some people can't focus when there's background sound, regardless of what that sound is.

We didn't try noise-cancelling headphones, so you might find a solution there.

But what more or less worked for us was to separate the workplace into clearly demarcated quiet zones and talking zones. If you want to focus, you go sit in a quiet zone, and when people come talk there you can send them packing to a talking zone. It's easier when everybody has laptops, but it's still doable with fixed desktops (just takes more planning). Now, this doesn't work perfectly, but it does make a difference.

Answer 7

Good question. I work in an open room as well.

I think there should be an escalation from: (a) personal interaction (b) a team statement and (c) policy.

Hints

Recently, I shot an email to 2 people who were mere feet away from me. They were yakking and I reminded them that there were 2 other people in the room in a serious, technical conversation. One of them was visiting the US from our European office. I was surprised that it worked: they quieted down and there seems to have been no resentment. The key was that I sent a discreet email. No one else knew what took place.

Another idea is to use catch phrases as though you are an offender. For example, when you talk about something off-topic, intentionally catch yourself by saying "well I would go on but that is more for a pub conversation". This can be contagious and can set a tone. Another might be "well, enough on that, now let's make some money for these people".

Team Statement

If hints don't work: at a stand-up, have the leader say something like "let's keep chit-chat to a reasonable level". It is vital that s/he not point anyone out directly, but clearly imply that there is an issue.

Policy

If none of this works, I guess one should try a policy but that is going to be a tough sell. Probably a better idea is to take major offenders aside (especially if they are younger) and tell them openly what their impact on the room is.

Answer 8

Something that we've been trying out for a few months is to allocate the last 15 minutes of every hour to chat / question time. For our small office of seven this has been working really well. The office is now pretty quiet but everyone still feels they're getting a chance to communicate.

As an added bonus it's conducive to thinking about a problem a bit more before asking for help; things that come up during the hour are often no longer an issue by the end of it. Which is good for everyone.

Answer 9

Find yourself a quiet place (conf room.... cafeteria..) and relocate yourself if all else fails. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28764/dealing-with-distractions Bring the situation to the notice of your superior or administrator and see if something can be worked out.

Answer 10

Can you get a few small, enclosed spaces the people can use for noise-making? For phone calls or talking over difficult problems? You can also use them when you just need a little quiet time yourself.

Instead of setting developers up with desktop PCs, get laptops. Still plug them in to a regular keyboard, monitor, and mouse, so the at-desk work experience is the same. But now anyone can grab their laptop and walk away when they need to.

It's amazing to me how well development on a laptop works today compared to a decade ago.

Answer 11

Well, according to peopleware each of us should have a separate room with acoustic isolation - but I frankly believe this is something extreme.

I use canal earphones (you name it, shure, etymotic research and utimate ears) but sometimes music can also distract me or create a massive headache. That's why, on extreme cases, I use Simply Noise which provides that sound when a TV channel has gone off (or when you can't tune a radio station).

The widespread use of headphones can cause your team to stop communicating at all. So be aware to always have an informal 30 min meeting sometime during the day (just like a scrum daily meeting) - this will help a lot.

Finally, office noise can also be disruptive when you need to make a conference call (specially when people on the other side are speaking in a language other than your mother tongue) - for these situations either get a separate room or explain the situation to the team. I am sure everyone will understand.

Answer 12

Construct a visual sound-alarm which flashes (or sounds) when the sound level is too high, alternatively allow developers to flash it (anonymously) when the sound level becomes too high, and any conversation etc. should then be kept down or moved to another room.

Answer 13

One issue that has not been mentioned yet is how you handle the "noise" that is generated when developers are pair programming. If you are required to be in the same room no matter which kind of work you are doing, then you are in deep trouble. My personnal experience is that pair programming IS noicy and often requires a white board and some heated/engaged discussions about patterns/coding standard and what have you. In those cases you either book a conference room for 4 hours in a row, or become very unpopular among your co-workers :-)

Answer 14

At my work place I think one of the main problem is the flexible time, so people comes at different times and each one's got a story to talk about that needs to be heard by the whole office. That usually makes it very noisy until about 10am.