Im Too Busy Today Isa Smell

There might be a correlation between a project's health and the availability of project members to help others. This is just a feeling, but a couple of people feel it. Have you noticed it? Do you have any stories to tell?

On the one hand, having your project members interrupted by a stream of questions will ruin their productivity.

On the hand we're focussing on now, you are supposed to be working in the same organisation and towards some common goal.

If a project member can't reply to others within two hours or so there's probably something wrong. Is it just one person, or is the whole team too busy to help with anything else? Is the project a DeathMarch?

[AnswerMe: Doesn't MaryPoppendieck point out in LeanSoftwareDevelopment that a full pipe is less efficient than one with a little air above the water?]

An important aspect of this topic is the following belief: Your teammate wouldn't have come to you for help if they didn't need your help.

On many projects I've been on, I've noticed people running around and babbling in a panic about how we can't make progress because they just realized we won't have enough time and resources to get it all done by some deadline.

"Well," says I, very calmly, "you're right. I guess all we can do is work on our #1 priority until it's done, and then do the next one."

Of course, that's always what we should do.

The other conclusion I've come to that echoes the above is that these people really aren't getting any more or less done than if they were to take a deep breath, tell themselves ThereIsNoPressure?, and solve that next big problem. -- AndrewMccormick

(It would also be quite sensible to manage scope, but many people don't believe that's an option.)

Managing scope is a great option. Manage scope early on for best effect. Another favorite technique is to nail the problem that is making problems. --Dave Van Buren

Working on each task according to its priority is the first step to managing scope. The next comes at the "deadline" and one must answer: ship or slip? A manager might realize that some features are being descoped by their location near the bottom of the priority ladder and bump them to "firefighting" status to keep them alive. This is a panic reaction, and amounts to both a decision to begin the DeathMarch and slip the schedule. Not even the important stuff will get enough resources to get finished by the deadline.

Related pages: FireFighting; TooMuchToDo, ClearTheDecks [ClearTheDesk?]; FourQuadrants

Category: ProcessSmells

Contributors: MatthewAstley, JeffGrigg, AndrewMccormick, BrentNewhall