Open floor plans have been all the rage in recent years, but there's definitely a right way and a wrong way to do things. I talked to David Galownia, CEO and President of Slingshot, a mobile-based software and product development company based in Louisville, KY, that recently moved into a new office with an open floor plan. I talked to him and several Slingshot team members about the lessons they learned in building an open floor plan that both increases collaboration, but also respects employee privacy.
Bill Detwiler: You recently moved into a new building and in the process switched from individual offices to an open floor plan. Why did you make the change?
David Galownia: With a lot of our projects, we bring our clients directly into our office. We collaborate with them. When we're developing, we actually bring development staff from our clients into our office, work with them as well, and there's a lot of communication. So, we had closed offices, and before, everybody had their own office, which was good, I think, to an extent. It's very peaceful, and quiet, and all that, but I think to really facilitate more communication, having an open office made a lot of sense.