Since we launched the company three years ago we’ve made our home at an office building on 17th and M in downtown Washington, DC.  It is a nice space and the location is fantastic.  We are in the Golden Triangle area, which is walking distance from a variety of great DC sites and neighborhoods (Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, the Mall, etc.), near the Metro and close to more restaurants, food trucks and bars than we have time to try.  We have been happy here.

We found out a few months ago that our landlord will be tearing down our office building, along with 3-4 others, to build a new mega building that will be geared towards high-end corporate tenants as opposed to small businesses like ours.  We have to be out of our space by the end of the year, so with mixed feelings we began our search for a new office a few months ago.  We’re excited by the opportunity to craft a new space from scratch but apprehensive about all the work involved in moving offices.

As someone who has done project management in some form my entire career, when starting the search my natural instinct was to start gathering requirements in the same way I would when planning a new web program for a client.  As the owner of the company I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted in our new space, but I needed to hear from the rest of our staff about what they were looking for.  I needed to conduct a discovery process.

As a first step, I put together a short survey that asked staff what was most and least important to them in the new office.  We have a distributed team, with half of our twenty person staff working out of the DC office and the other half working remotely and coming into the office a few times a year.  So it was important to construct the survey in a way that differentiated the needs of these two types of users.

The results mostly confirmed my assumptions.  We are a Washington, DC firm and our office needs to be in the city.  Metro and bus accessibility are critical, as is access to plenty of restaurants and bars.  But the survey revealed a few things that were surprises to me:

1. Our current space has windows on only one side. And those windows are only able to be enjoyed by three people who have offices that overlook M Street. The survey revealed that the rest of the staff are starved for natural light.  Katie even went so far as to forward me articles about how a lack of natural light negatively impacts sleep patterns.  As one of the few people with an office with a window, I had taken it for granted and undervalued how important light is to those that don’t have it.
2. Nobody really cared that much about building amenities.  Perks like a concierge and fitness center just aren’t that important to our staff. People don’t want or need a lot of bells and whistles.  These things were more important to me than the rest of the team.

Based on these survey results and my conversations with staff, I put together a requirements list. Since we need to work within a budget, it was important to prioritize our needs in the same way I would ask one of our clients.  I separated our requirements into lists of “must haves”, “nice to haves” and “don’t needs” that were put into priority order.  These requirements  were very similar to the lists of user stories we create when planning a web program for our clients.  Here is what the list  looks like:

Must Haves

1. Office is in Washington, DC.  We do not want to move to Virginia or Maryland.
2. Office is Metro and bus line accessible.
3. Office has space for four private offices.
4. Office has space for eight other work stations.  An open space plan is preferred over cubes.
5. Office has a main conference room capable of seating at least eight people comfortably.
6. Office has a kitchen with refrigerator, sink, microwave and dishwasher.
7. Office has small storage room and server closet with room for a server rack.
8. Office has space for 3-4 large filing cabinets.
9. Office must have access to extremely reliable Internet Service Provider.

Nice to Haves

1. Office has more natural light/windows than current office.
2. Office is in same part of town as current office.
3. Office has extra space/workstations for telecommuters when they visit.
4. Office has a small secondary conference room optimized for four people.  Primarily used for small team meetings and conference calls.
5. Office has main conference room capable of seating 16 people.
6. Office has area where people can eat lunch together.
7. Office has gym/showers in building that employees can use.
8. Office has in building parking garage.
9. Office has concierge.

Things We Don’t Need

1. Office has a formal reception area.  Our company has a flat structure with no admin staff, so we don’t need to waste space with a reception area.
2. Office doesn’t need large work room. We have one in the current office and it has basically become a place for Ron to indulge his hoarding problem.

We sent our requirements list to our real estate team who are using it to narrow down our options and to construct our space plan.  We started touring offices last week.

In the context of web development the goal of a discovery process is to surface requirements and priorities early on to minimize surprises late in the process.  Work done up front saves time down the road.

While not nearly as involved as the process of planning a website, I think the simple discovery process we performed in planning our office will pay dividends down the road.  It will help us focus our search and provide a solid framework with which to make our final decision.