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To be creative you need less utilization. Business have been so focused on reducing utilization they have inadvertently removed creativity (which they probably

To be creative you need less utilization. Business have been so focused on reducing utilization they have inadvertently removed creativity (which they probably don't care much about). However, as dev utilization is high, service times become elevated as well. As things take longer and longer to turn around, we'll see utilization come back down.

codr7 2y ago
I agree, once of the biggest mistakes almost all companies make these days. They just can't stand the idea of employees not being super busy. The result is everyone optimizing to look super busy.
nradov 2y ago
I think you meant that businesses have focused on maximizing utilization. It turns out that this is the wrong thing to focus on. Even if you don't care about creativity or innovation, from a purely economic standpoint it's more important to minimize process step queue length instead of maximizing resource utilization. http://celeritaspublishing.com/books/ http://celeritaspublishing.com/books/
- from-nibly 2y ago
  See also "The goal" by Eli Goldratt
- hinkley 2y ago
  Queuing theory also says it’s wrong. That’s why the lines everywhere get so long. They’ve optimized for somewhere on the bell curve of usual activity levels and any time tasks come in faster than that, wait times grow extravagantly. If you want wait times to be short you have to aim for hair under 60% normal usage.
nyrikki 2y ago
It has also reduced quality and the incremental improvements intended to happen during 'slack' time. Pretty much why people hate Agile, what most people got is a poor mixture of Taylorism and modern organization design. But hey, the Tableau viz looks good in the meeting!
- nradov 2y ago
  The major enterprise agile methodologies such as Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) or Scaled Agile Framework (SaFE) explicitly state not to do that. I've seen agile done well, but of course many organizations with incompetent management fail to implement the documented best practices. https://less.works/less/principles/queueing_theory https://less.works/less/principles/queueing_theory
arijo 2y ago
In my experience most businesses come from the assumption that there are creative roles(e.g UI/UX) and engineering roles. Engineering is there to implement the creative vision - not a creative endeavour in itself. They are aware that creativity takes time - but that engineering resources need to be efficiently allocated and optimised.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  UI/UX staff are also generally pretty good at establishing and defending a creative beachhead in organisations.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  It seems that this cycle of civilization will end and businesses will still not grasp the very simple fact that often times programming is both engineering and creativity. Oh well.
  - adregan 2y ago
    Let’s not all point a finger at the “business” boogeyman who doesn’t understand coding is creative without acknowledging that many programmers today are right there with them. The current state of interviews tells me that a lot of programmers prefer to think of it as software “engineering” rather than as a craft or trade. If creativity meant something to them, I wouldn’t spend all my time bored silly trying to memorize algorithms.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Cool, okay. Nuance matters, I agree. Nuance also demands we point out at the businessmen who can't discern one programmer from another. Different people thrive in very different environments and this is, 99% of the time, ignored.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
dehrmann 2y ago
> However, as dev utilization is high, service times become elevated as well. As things take longer and longer to turn around Funny enough, this is exactly like running a server. Once CPU is over ~80%, request latency increases quickly.
tuan 2y ago
I think it's the lack of trust in employees that companies want to increase utilization as much as possible. It's like if employees are not working on assigned work, they would not do things that benefit the company in any way.

codr7 2y ago

I agree, once of the biggest mistakes almost all companies make these days. They just can't stand the idea of employees not being super busy. The result is everyone optimizing to look super busy.

nradov 2y ago

I think you meant that businesses have focused on maximizing utilization. It turns out that this is the wrong thing to focus on. Even if you don't care about creativity or innovation, from a purely economic standpoint it's more important to minimize process step queue length instead of maximizing resource utilization. http://celeritaspublishing.com/books/ http://celeritaspublishing.com/books/

from-nibly 2y ago
See also "The goal" by Eli Goldratt
hinkley 2y ago
Queuing theory also says it’s wrong. That’s why the lines everywhere get so long. They’ve optimized for somewhere on the bell curve of usual activity levels and any time tasks come in faster than that, wait times grow extravagantly. If you want wait times to be short you have to aim for hair under 60% normal usage.

nyrikki 2y ago

It has also reduced quality and the incremental improvements intended to happen during 'slack' time. Pretty much why people hate Agile, what most people got is a poor mixture of Taylorism and modern organization design. But hey, the Tableau viz looks good in the meeting!

nradov 2y ago
The major enterprise agile methodologies such as Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) or Scaled Agile Framework (SaFE) explicitly state not to do that. I've seen agile done well, but of course many organizations with incompetent management fail to implement the documented best practices. https://less.works/less/principles/queueing_theory https://less.works/less/principles/queueing_theory

arijo 2y ago

In my experience most businesses come from the assumption that there are creative roles(e.g UI/UX) and engineering roles. Engineering is there to implement the creative vision - not a creative endeavour in itself. They are aware that creativity takes time - but that engineering resources need to be efficiently allocated and optimised.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
robertlagrant 2y ago
UI/UX staff are also generally pretty good at establishing and defending a creative beachhead in organisations.
pdimitar 2y ago
It seems that this cycle of civilization will end and businesses will still not grasp the very simple fact that often times programming is both engineering and creativity. Oh well.
- adregan 2y ago
  Let’s not all point a finger at the “business” boogeyman who doesn’t understand coding is creative without acknowledging that many programmers today are right there with them. The current state of interviews tells me that a lot of programmers prefer to think of it as software “engineering” rather than as a craft or trade. If creativity meant something to them, I wouldn’t spend all my time bored silly trying to memorize algorithms.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Cool, okay. Nuance matters, I agree. Nuance also demands we point out at the businessmen who can't discern one programmer from another. Different people thrive in very different environments and this is, 99% of the time, ignored.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago

dehrmann 2y ago

> However, as dev utilization is high, service times become elevated as well. As things take longer and longer to turn around Funny enough, this is exactly like running a server. Once CPU is over ~80%, request latency increases quickly.

tuan 2y ago

I think it's the lack of trust in employees that companies want to increase utilization as much as possible. It's like if employees are not working on assigned work, they would not do things that benefit the company in any way.