ideas

Costs of Multitasking

When a developer is not attached to a project, the switching costs overlap:

if he switches to another task, the current project loses efficiency, and when the developer returns

to the project, he wastes colleagues' time trying to get back on track.

Research suggests many ways in which multitasking is inefficient

or even harmful. Consider:

Multitasking invokes the more primitive parts of the brain that are concerned

with personal safety, pulling energy from the more modern parts concerned

with higher level thinking https://www.strategy-business.com/media/file/Neuroscience_of_Leadershp-webinar.pdf

Multitasking causes stress, it can also damage cells needed for new memories

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/multitasking-a-medical-and-mental-hazard-201201074063

We are more prone to errors when we multitask so the quality of our work results goes down https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/brain-sense/200908/the-madness-multitasking

Some parts of the brain are sequential processors, able to accept only one input

at a time https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/25multi.html

Additional load from multitasking will lead to a quicker depletion of cognitive ability and more frequent need for recovery time ("Your Brain At Work", David Rock)

Multitasking VS Unitasking for Organizations

This scenario shows 4 people working on 3 projects. The dynamics are the same for more people and larger projects. The people are multitasking on 3 projects.

The same people form a single team and complete the projects sequentially. 2 of the 3 projects finish sooner in this scenario.

With the reduction of context switching and a modest 10% gain in productivity due to teaming synergies, we would expect to see all 3 projects finish even sooner.

Johanna Rothman covers this topic in more detail in: "Manage Your Project Portfolio"

Simplify Project Management

Newcomers do not have to thoroughly immerse themselves in the study of each project, they just need to delve into only one and immediately start work.

A project manager can easily track the workload of each developer in his team and be sure that tasks of other projects are not hanging on them.

It is enough for PM to explain the task to the developers once, since they constantly keep the context and there is no confusion in their heads.

A project manager always knows who to assign a certain task to, as he is guided in the project and in the skills of each team member.

Each developer works only in his space

Specializations & Project Names

New developers can immediately understand who is working on which project and what functions they are performing, which means they can quickly navigate the company and join the team.

Designers and QA will always know which developer to ask in case of questions on a specific project and specific functionality.

Project managers will immediately understand who can be assigned to a new task щтon their project.

It will also be easier to track the workload and lack of developers with a specific stack on each project.

Skill Level

ЗЬPM will be able to assign more skillful developers to more complex tasks, and less skillful developers to simple features.

It will be possible to balance the skill of the developers for each project so that the development efficiency is evenly distributed.

Skill level motivates developers to improve their skills and learn new technologies in order to move to the next level. This helps to increment quality of the products.

2014-present

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2012-2014

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2009-2012

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2005-2009

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