How do you organize desk allocation?

Question

When you move into another floor or another location and you are giving a bunch of desk, how do you organize the desk allocation within the team? How do you deal with conflicts of several people wanting the same desk or nobody wanting some desk.

Answer 1

Unfortunately we use "a first come first served approach". Whoever gets their stuff on the desk first gets it. Of course as we are English we are terribly reserved and polite whilst secretly wanting to kill to get the best spot.

We do try to re-organise our desks based around teams and we move people in and out of teams regularly, so even if you got a poor desk this time, you have chance to move and pick a better one next time.

Answer 2

Try to make each desk as equal as the next; Usually I have preference over desks due to their location within a room; it's direction to the door (i.e. random strangers coming in to see what's on your screen); the amount of light; noise levels, etc.

Then if you still have conflicts try to find out why they want that particular desk and see if its possible to reproduce those requirements elsewhere or try to arrange the other desks to best fit this pattern.

You're never going to suit everybodies needs but I think asking what people need and want and arranging the desks to suit that may be more helpful than trying to determine the order in which people get to choose.

Answer 3

I try to keep close to the people i will work the most with.

For example, i will try to keep close to another programmer if i'm doing pair programming... I will stay close to the analyst if we are "designing" the module together...

I will be with the people i have more empathy if i'm in a general project...

it depends on you...

Here we fight for the LCD monitors :P

Answer 4

At my current job we hot desk it, although people tend to settle on a particular seat.

At my last Job the Development manager just made layout and changed it every now and then to ensure that the people who needed to be sat together were and that new people got exposed to as many people as possible through moving desk every 3-4 months.

If we were moving to a new site I reackon first come first served, with the caveat that people working together should sit at least close to each other...

Answer 5

To be fair (in real world it may not happen) just make lot

Answer 6

Right now we are a bit crowded, but at the end of the year we are moving to a bigger location. And we decided to have as much 2 person rooms as possible.

Luckily I'am on the re-housing team so I have at least something to say ;-). But in the end the rooms are divided by department and need.

Answer 7

Firstly, make all the desks as equal as possible. Similar light, size, chair, monitor, space, etc.

Then depending on the size of you company you assign a group of desks to each team (as they will definitely need to be in communication with each other) and let them decide between them who has each desk.

Trust your people to make sensible decisions.