Show Other Requests in to the Team
Part of answering the “When will this project be done?” question is to assess other requests in to the team. I already said that multitasking makes estimation impossible and reduces throughput. Sometimes managers don’t realize they are asking the team to multitask. Consider showing your managers how many multitasking requests the team receives, and the kinds of requests.
If your managers don’t realize they are asking the team to multitask, consider creating a chart, such as the one outlined in the following table, that shows the day and the number of requests since the last time the managers saw the project state.
Day | Number of Requests | Individual or Team? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Day 1 | 2 | Individual and team | Sandy for Project B and the team for support |
Day 2 | 1 | Individual | Sandy for Project B |
Day 5 | 5 | Individual | Each person for a different project |
Day 6 | 2 | Individual | Both: Sandy for Project B again |
Day 8 | 1 | Individual | Sandy for Project B again |
The managers might explain, “Project B is more valuable to the organization than this project is.” In that case, the team might ask why it is working on this project and not Project B.
There are several possibilities if Project B is more valuable:
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Neither the managers nor the team worry about the effect of multitasking on the team.
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The team might even lend Sandy to Project B for a while to help that team finish its work.
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The entire team might help Project B for a while so the more important project can finish first.
However, what I see more often is that Project B is not more valuable, and that managers don’t realize the effect their multitasking requests have on the team. Here, Day 5 is particularly troublesome: each person on the team had requests from different projects.
If the team works on one-day or smaller stories, team members might be able to complete their work before servicing this interrupt. Or if this project is of lesser value than any of the other projects, team members might be fine with interruptions to their work.
More often, the managers are not assessing the project portfolio enough. (See how to do so in Manage Your Project Portfolio [Rot16a].) Or this team (or another) is not a cross-functional feature team. Or the managers don’t realize multitasking causes delays in projects. Too often, managers don’t realize team members create defects in one way or another when they attempt to multitask.
Multitasking requests are rarely something a team servant leader can resolve. More often, managers need to see the requests and decide what to do. Help your managers help you by showing them your data. You might add another column showing the effects of multitasking on the project, such as “Feature 1 is late now.” Or you might show your cumulative flow graph, where your work is stuck in one column or several columns because the team cannot finish its work.