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I have two projects, with identical priorities and work hours demand, and a single developer. Two possible approaches:
I can't see any reason why people would choose the second approach. But they do. Can you explain me why?
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After observing hundreds of employees at this large multinational over several years, we found that juggling more than five simultaneous projects can be detrimental to meeting project deadlines. But working on less than five projects can prevent people from achieving maximum productivity.
- First and foremost, break development groups into smaller teams of 3-4 developers. Each team worked in relative isolation from each other, but within the team, people worked much more cohesively. - With this approach, stand ups are fast and planning meetings takes 1-2 hours compared to an otherwise solid 4 hours.
Having too many projects is demotivating, confusing and undermines the ability of leaders to implement goals. It's also costly. If you're suffering from Too Many Projects you probably know it, but let's confirm. Research suggests 2-3 projects at a time is optimal for individual focus and collective scheduling.
It seems to me that this decision often comes down to office politics. One business group doesn't want to feel any less important than another, especially with identical priorities set at the top. Regardless as to how many different ways you explain why doing both at the same time is a bad idea, it seems as though the politics get in the way.
To get the best product to the users, you need to prevent developer thrashing. When the developers are thrashing, the risk of defects and length of delivery times begin to increase exponentially.
Also, if you can put your business hat on, you can try to explain to them that right now, nobody is getting any value from what the completed products will deliver. It makes more sense for the business to get the best ROI product out the door first to begin recouping the investment ASAP, while the other project will start as soon as the first is finished.
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Sometimes you need to just step away from the code you have been writing for 11 hours in order to stay maximally productive. After you have been staring at the minutiae of a system you have been implementing for a long time it can become difficult to see the forest for the trees, and that is when you start to make mistakes that are hard to un-make.
I think it is best to have 2-3 current projects; one main one and 1-2 other projects that aren't on such a strict timeline.
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