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If anything I've often seen the same thing happen in development, but from the other side. i.e. You never should have had this much work put in the sprint, but

If anything I've often seen the same thing happen in development, but from the other side. i.e. You never should have had this much work put in the sprint, but the business decided that Deadline Driven Development was a part of their 'Agile' process. You wind up with 13-21 points when you normally can only do 8. Naturally, corners are cut. Usually around unit tests. (And then everyone wonders why the tests are worthless)

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Yup. That's where what GP wrote comes into play, though in the opposite role than they meant. There are at least three reasons you need to pace yourself at work: One, peak capacity work is unsustainable over long term; there's no point in burning yourself out in the span of few months, because then you won't be doing anything at all. Two, if your managers try to set up the workload at the level of your observed performance (or worse, try to squeeze more work by assigning a bit more things to do than were done the last time), then if you start going on afterburners, you'll set up an unrealistic baseline that you'll be later held accountable to. That's where cutting corners will start. Three, systems with no slack are fragile. If everyone is constantly crunching and a genuine emergency pops up, nobody will be able to deal with it. There's probably some general principle in systems science that systems under full load are not optimal once you start doing risk analysis. Good managers understand that, and will actively prevent you from getting yourself overworked - as developers are sometimes prone to do.
- mathieuh 6y ago
  Your second point conveys what I meant far better. I'm by no means saying one should be a shirker, I mean you should manage your managers by understanding that their role is to get the most work out of you as possible. Leaving yourself a little leeway is just common sense, as you say, if you're working yourself to the bone constantly and giving people the impression that that's just your standard level, eventually something's going to give, likely your mental health.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Yup. That's where what GP wrote comes into play, though in the opposite role than they meant. There are at least three reasons you need to pace yourself at work: One, peak capacity work is unsustainable over long term; there's no point in burning yourself out in the span of few months, because then you won't be doing anything at all. Two, if your managers try to set up the workload at the level of your observed performance (or worse, try to squeeze more work by assigning a bit more things to do than were done the last time), then if you start going on afterburners, you'll set up an unrealistic baseline that you'll be later held accountable to. That's where cutting corners will start. Three, systems with no slack are fragile. If everyone is constantly crunching and a genuine emergency pops up, nobody will be able to deal with it. There's probably some general principle in systems science that systems under full load are not optimal once you start doing risk analysis. Good managers understand that, and will actively prevent you from getting yourself overworked - as developers are sometimes prone to do.

mathieuh 6y ago
Your second point conveys what I meant far better. I'm by no means saying one should be a shirker, I mean you should manage your managers by understanding that their role is to get the most work out of you as possible. Leaving yourself a little leeway is just common sense, as you say, if you're working yourself to the bone constantly and giving people the impression that that's just your standard level, eventually something's going to give, likely your mental health.