"Well organized with the ability to effectively manage multiple projects simultaneously. Extensive experience in a fast-paced deadline-oriented environment".When I first look at it, I was really surprised by the word "multiple" and "simultaneously", it is pretty obvious that they requires developers to be able to do multitasking jobs. Today I would like to dig this topic a little bit.
What does "manage multiple projects simultaneously" exactly mean?
- Working project A for 5 minutes, then working on prjoect B another 5 minutes, and project C for another 5 minutes?
- Or when you are working on project A, then interrupt by project B, you have to suspend the project A, then switch to project B;
- Does it mean the developer has more project working simultaneously, the better for his performance review?
- Does multitasking really improve the productivity? get faster delivery?
This idea is totally wrong
In the last 2 years I read a lot books about agile and software craftsmanship, so I am quite confident to say this is totally wrong, it will only make things worst!
Fist it is against human nature. Human is not machine, he is non-linear, a person can only focus on one thing at a time. Interrupt and context switching is very expensive. The book Pragmatic Thinking & learning and peopleware cover this topic, and explain why managing focus is so important to maintain a higher productivity. and that is the reason why the Pomodoro technique will force you only focus on one task in each 25 minute session. Managing people's focus is the key of improving his productivity.
Second it is against the agile principles and and other proven theories. The goal of agile is to deliver the product as fast as possible, but the interesting thing is the agile trying to reach this goal by limiting the Working-In-Progress items (WIP). Scrum is trying to limit WIP in one iteration, WIP is called inventory in Lean, which is a waste and should be limited. Limiting WIP is the key concept of Kanban technology. and in theory of constraints also proved that putting to many task in the queue will only slow down the productivity.The reason is pretty obvious, think about this scenario, if you have 3 projects, each will take one week. If you work sequentially, you will deliver one project after 1 week, 2 projects after 2 weeks, and you will get 3 projects after 3 weeks. But if you work simultaneously, you will get any project done until after 3 weeks, but considering the context switch cost, it will take you longer time to finish all 3 projects. So based on Scrum, or Lean/Kanban, or Theory of Contraints, working simultaneously will not deliver fast, it will only delay the delivery time.
Third is it is a shift burden to from mangers to developers. Managing backlog is manager's responsibility, but requiring developer multitasking means putting some more backlogs into developers. It might looks better for managers, but actually it is bad, since those extra backlogs are either under working or putting into developer's own backlog. This is actually hide the visibility, which is even harder for manager to track the progress. I can feel that the multitasking is a solution which managers are trying to solve too many backlogs, but it is a bad idea, since it only move the backlog from manager layer to developer layer, which making things even worse; the manager should figure out the root cause and find a true solution to increase the burden down rate or increasing the productivity. I like to call this issue is leaky management issue(copied the idea from leaky abstraction from OO design), because it is supposed to be solved in the management layer, but it leaks to the developer layer.
Based on the above analysis, I can feel multitasking will generate following result:
developer will have low productivity, projects will get more delayed, developer have to work harder and over time; since more projects get delayed, so manger put more projects to developer to work simultaneously, then becomes a positive feedback loop, which will make things even worse...
Summary
I feel very sad for my old colleagues, because they are not treated well; and I feel sorry for my ex-managers, because they are unaware of the basic principle of agile. To make a developer working efficiently, the only thing is trying to make him to work on one thing only. I strongly suggest QuickPlay to remove multitasking in its job requirements, but removing that from managers minds are much harder.
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