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Serverless Advocate's avatar

Great article Allen. I’ve personally experienced fixed deadline projects in the past with unrealistic early estimations on overall size given to stakeholders (not taking into account Hofstadter Law) which causes a team to burn out due to unrealistic expectations and poor overall stakeholder management. The deadline remains, the team doesn’t grow to accommodate the actual work, and the team burnt out.

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Anthony Mowers's avatar

I like the article .

It triggered some tangential thoughts about what are some non/obvious examples of “work harder” and “ control over productivity”. Two examples came to mind.

I share them here because I’m curious about people’s thoughts on them.

For example, “work harder” is commonly understood to mean produce more output. I suspect it could also mean force more cognitive load onto the workers. Consider a team with 5 people vs 15 people. Team topologies probably have an impact on burnout.

Another example, “control over productivity” could probably mean any management actions that prioritizes the team’s output over the team members’ daily work experiences. For example, strong dependency upon a story point method for planning. Operating with the theory that if the team creates their own estimates then burnout from overwork is because they’ve misestimated.

Thoughts?

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