Working on Overdrive?

Tom Breur

22 October 2017

Working at a “sustainable pace” is one of the cornerstones of Agile, and one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto states:

“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.”

Work need not come in at a steady pace. In fact, it often doesn’t. The arrival pace may have random and almost certainly some non-random fluctuations. So how do you deal with that variance?

A common response is to temporarily work harder to meet deadlines and absorb any schedule pressure. This is an adaptive way to cope with increased work pressure, but unfortunately it comes at a cost. “Burning the midnight oil” certainly leads to temporarily improved output, which makes it an adaptive strategy, but it has some pernicious side effects.

One of them might be that the defect rate of your work goes up, further increasing the pressure to meet targets! A second side effect is that if you try this tactic for too long, it burns you out – which would lead to dramatically reduced output! It is obviously at odds with the Agile principle of maintaining a sustainable pace.  

In system dynamics, this phenomenon has been modeled with causal diagrams:

Source: Sterman (2000) “Business Dynamics”

This model is by no means the only “right” model to show the unwanted side effects of working overtime. But many of the feedback loops in this diagram like “cutting corners” must surely look familiar. You probably haven’t tried it yourself, but must surely have seen others do it, right?

Thought leader Jerry Weinberg has suggested there may be yet another reason for people to be tempted to work overtime. He suggests that we don't work overtime so much to get the work done on time as to shield our- selves from blame when the work inevitably doesn't get done on time.

One of the premises of Agile is that we fit work in accordance with our schedule, so-called scaling to capacity. Not the other way around. Impossible deadlines, or dreamlines, are of all times. Only the bravest have enough confidence to admit they are in a bind. Surprisingly, opening up that (admittedly difficult) discussion can make a world of difference, and open the door to a collaborative discussion on how to create the most possible value – for everyone!