The most common problem software development teams face is overcommitment, according to Agile Programme Manager Steven Thomas. Taking on too much work at a time leads to worse code, greater burnout, and less productivity. Unfortunately, 60% of software professionals are overcommitted, with iterations ending with items still on the backlog and stories blocked.
Overcommitment happens for a number of reasons, chief among them being the fact that software development is notoriously hard to estimate.
Good, bad, or indifferent, stakeholders generally expect estimates. So it’s important to be able to offer estimates that won’t leave you delivering substandard work and/or burning out. Here are some common causes of overcommitment, and what to do about them.
1. Escalating cycles
Watts Humphrey, author of Managing the Software Process, described how the software development cycle tends to escalate.
First, products tend to require more code than stakeholders expect them to. Then these larger-than-expected programs create new, larger technical and management problems. These surprise problems then compound in cost along the way. It’s a cycle that ends in missed deadlines, technical debt, burned out coders, or all of the above.
What to do
Asking more questions at the beginning is one way to more accurately estimate how much code a project will require. Engineers are often more used to Knowing Things than asking a lot of questions. No one likes to look like they don’t know what they’re doing. But you don’t know what you’re doing! When talking to stakeholders, keep asking questions until you have a full picture of the project’s goals, audience, limitations, dependencies, etc. The better you understand the scope at the outset, the more ammunition you have to push back against scope creep later.
2. The need to be a hero
Maybe you’re gunning for a promotion. Or you want to be indispensable. Or want to “own” an important technology or initiative. “The main reason why people overcommit is that they want to be and/or seem successful/important,” writes Management Consultant Veronica Rae Saron. This ambition is great for you and great for your organization. But it’s also a double-edged sword when it leads you to take on more than you can handle well over a long period of time.
What to do
One thing that may help you get further, faster is to narrow down your ambition. What, exactly, do you want to be doing in six month, or a year? Do you want to be Tech Lead? Do you want to learn a new language or up your skills? Narrowing down your focus to your biggest ambitions means you can stop saying yes to everything that comes your way and only agree to what gets you closer to your goals. That way you’re not burning the midnight oil for mediocre returns spread across several goals. Instead, you’re honed in on the one or two areas that will yield the highest returns.
3. You’re constantly distracted
It’s easy to commit to the amount of work you could get done if you had the ability to focus on one task for hours at a time. Unfortunately, the average worker focuses on a task for about three minutes before getting distracted by an incoming Slack message, email, or coworker stopping by to chat.
These distractions kill productivity. Shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40% of your productive time due to a phenomenon called “attention residue.” When you’re on your new task, for about 20 minutes a part of your brain is still thinking about the last task. This is especially true when the previous task was more entertaining. So that quick check in on the #memes Slack channel ends up costing you a lot more time than the 5 minutes you spent there. “It is very difficult to get into the groove of writing code if you’re interrupted every hour by a meeting,” Camille Fournier wrote in The Manager’s Path.
What to do
Software Developer Christian Muehle’s team set a goal to spend at least 60% of their total time on developing. This is a great start, but if that time is fractured it won’t be as effective. That’s why Engineering Management Consultant Lara Hogan recommends “defragging” and color-coding your work calendar. Scheduling your meetings back-to-back opens up more Focus Time for deep work.
Fournier recommends managers respect the “maker schedule” and try to avoid scheduling one-on-one meetings in the middle of reports’ productive workflow hours.
Creating time for focus reduces overcommitment without reducing your total output by helping you get more done in the same number of hours.
Going forward
For most teams, estimates remain a necessary evil. They’re incredibly difficult, and the pressure is constant to do more in less time. Not only do smart developers end up overcommitting, but it’s often the smartest and most ambitious that have the hardest time saying no.
To provide estimates that don’t leave you feeling stressed and burned out, try asking more questions at the outset, narrowing down your ambitions to your top one or two goals, and defragging your work calendar so you can get more work done in fewer hours.
