Justin York - Simdesk

“Del's leadership was instrumental in bringing agile methodologies to our development team. While transitioning to scrum, I often consulted with Del about how to handle things in the scrum framework. Once our team was fully running on scrum, I felt that we were at least twice as productive as we had been in the past.”

Matt Willson - Pervasive Software

“As Delmar's manager for over a year, I was very impressed with the simplicity of his designs, the quality of his software, and the tenacity he brought to problem solving, especially customer issues. Delmar provided strong leadership for the developers who worked under his tutelage.”

Steve Mook - Pervasive Software and Simdesk

"Del is experienced,enthusiastic and tenacious - an excellent team lead with expertise in UI design and development and Scrum project management. He is willing to learn new technologies, challenge assumptions, take risks, and be accountable for results. His skill and leadership would benefit any team that seeks to improve its ability to deliver value to customers and to the business."

My Agile Experience

What was really exciting was to see the Scrum methodology adopted company wide at Simdesk. Because of the success of our team I was able to train and mentor other team leads, managers and corporate executives to use Scrum. This lead to increased productivity and better communication among the teams, support, product managers and upper management. Goals are well defined and consistently meet.

My Reading List

Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins (Paperback - June 14, 2010)

Available on safaribooksonline.com as a Rough Cut.

Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum [Book] by Mike Cohn - Addison Wesley

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders - Paperback (Jan. 16, 2006) by Jean Tabaka

Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) Roman Pichler

Practices of an Agile Developer by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt - Pragmatic Book Shelf

Feb
01

Multi-tasking verses Single-tasking

By Delmar Hager

Companies seem to want to increase productivity of their workers by making sure they are fully utilized by putting developers on multiple projects and forcing them to multi-task. Manager fear “down” time for their directs. But is it wise to schedule 100% of an employee’s time?

What are the perceived benefits of multitasking:

  1. A developer will always have a task to work on.
  2. More projects can be staffed.
  3. More development hours are recorded against projects.

But are benefits producing a good return on investment? Let’s look at each one of these benefits.

1. A developer will always have a task to work on

Every time one changes tasks especially on another project there is a problem of context switching. First one must take the task they are working on and save the information that is needed to work on it in the future. When starting a new task, previous information about the new task must be gathered and the task started. This may create considerable overhead with large tasks in different projects.

Also, a developer may choose tasks that are “easier” to do and avoid project critical tasks when making a switch. This makes them look more productive because tasks are getting done.

2. More projects can be staffed

It does look like company resources are be used more efficiently because more hours can be allocated. But are these really productive hours?

3. More development hours are recorded against projects.

We can all look busy but are we really productive.

One of the foundations of Scrum is that the team is able to focus on a project for a sprint.  This quote is from Scaling Lean and Agile Development page 142:

Do your job. Focus all your efforts and skills on doing the work that you’ve committed to doing. Don’t worry about anything else. In Scrum, work is not arbitrarily forced on people, and work cannot be added during the iteration. Nor is there any multitasking or distraction, because each team is 100 percent committed to the set of small achievable items chosen for the short iteration. There is no partial allocation on different projects; partial allocation means partial results. Each person’s time is 100 percent allocated to the goals of the iteration for the product. This provides the foundation for the focus and reduction in multitasking that leads to quick delivery and productivity

When a team can focus on a single goal they will be more productive. Assigning team members to multiple projects is a sure way of decreasing productivity.

Categories : General