The "war room" setting, devoid of walls and equipped with central worktables, appears to encourage communication and collaboration. University of Michigan researchers compared the productivity of software-development teams in war room and traditional settings and found that workers in open offices were twice as productive.
"Although the war room teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, for coordination, problem solving and learning," explains Stephanie Teasley, Ph.D., an assistant research scientist at Michigan who presented the findings at an Association for Computing
Note to more traditionally arranged offices: There must also be some value in knowing you can't slack off when your every move is being watched by the entire office.
