Signs You Development Teams is Overwhelmed

Everyone is 𝗴𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽𝘆 all the time.

That’s usually a good indicator that your team is overloaded.

What are some other signs?

❓ Do new features take forever while everyone busts their tail to get things done?
❓ Is there a mounting pile of unfinished work?
❓ Is “buggy” or “slow” the first word that comes to mind with your software?
❓ Maybe it’s frequent customer complaints or recurring outages.
❓ Or it could be endless meetings and discussions needed in order to get anything done.

These are some common signs that you are in trouble.

You cannot paper over these.

You cannot attempt to fix one thing in isolation from all the others.

They can be notoriously difficult and the solutions are sometimes counterintuitive.

The classic example is the attempt to increase quality by adding QA at the end of the process. This usually makes everyone work even harder, slows things down AND results in lower quality as you introduce more space between the creation of value and the part where you ensure that quality is baked in.

I have found that starting from the basics is effective when working with clients.

To understand and execute it, the process can be visualized as linear. However, it is not rigid. We can jump around if we need to.

𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: Ensure you have all the correct infrastructure (people, process, tech) to consistently make small changes quickly without breaking anything.

𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: Understand how your production systems work in reality and be able to address any issues quickly before your customers find out.

𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘆: Manage complexity - if you don’t, complexity will eat your lunch and then eat you. This includes complexity in your architecture or your process, or even your feature set.

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻/𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁: Only then should we start integrating all these capabilities and create longer-term plans. This is the time to measure, refine, and make longer-term planning decisions.