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With CFOs looking to trim down real estate costs, data centers may be the de facto gravitational center of organizations in terms of square footage (aside from manufacturing plants, that is). Companies may see a benefit in using short-term office space to handle planned surges in "on site" work, as they sublet out sections of their own offices or escape from leases in expensive office towers.
The strength of the office is collaboration, so offices will have to become collaboration-centric. That doesn't mean the open-plan office fad will continue, however. What it means is that technology is going to have to make the office more of a hub for remote collaboration—more video, more screen sharing, and more virtualization of physical collaboration tools like whiteboards. Conference rooms are going to have fewer chairs and more screens, with face-to-face collaboration via video becoming the de-facto way to do meetings.
Work that can only be done in the office—whether it be due to compliance issues, the computing or bandwidth required to do it, or the need for interaction with expensive physical objects—will also have to leverage collaboration with people who can't be there to put hands on. Tasks like rapid prototyping and product engineering and lab work, for example, require interaction with expensive gear that can't be dropped into a virtual collaboration space (yet) but can benefit from visiting and remote collaborators.
Can a mix of VR/AR substitute for a physical office for the purposes of collaboration?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 22 2020, @03:36PM (1 child)
What fraction of companies actively encourage a spirit of collaboration in the first place, over "get your own job done and let people around you struggle for hours on something you could fix in 5 minutes"?
I don't know what fraction, but my current company works well this way. We use Agile (like so many places claim to these days), and the team as a whole is rated on how much they get done. The focus is on pushing work through in every sprint, so we're very much encouraged to drop what we're doing and assist others when they get bogged down, so that the burndown chart looks good. I thought lots of companies were using Agile methodology these days.
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Saturday August 22 2020, @08:04PM
They say they're using Agile. If your company genuinely commits to the reason and intent of the methodology, *that* attitude comes from the top.