Team Rhythms and Noise

quiet scrum teamsScrum makes an assumption that you have a dedicated team who can focus on something for a sustained period of time. Most highly cognitive products require sustained focus and a consistent team rhythm.

Teams tend to get into a common rhythm in which quiet time andscrum rhythmsnoisy time are synced so that team members don’t bother each other very much. People whose work is disconnected have different rhythms. Noise is a real problem when you’re trying to do something that is highly cogitative.  So protecting the team from out-of-sync noise can be very important.

Questions

How do you protect teams from out-of-sync noise?

One might expect that surrounding an entire team with some noise protection (walls or space) would be sufficient. Does that work?

It shouldn’t be important to protect team members from each other’s noise. Do you agree?

What have you observed? What has worked in the past?

Is there a demographic shift between older and younger?