Your Agile team might be losing productivity without you realizing it!

[Evan Fishman - Rally for Jira]

🚨 𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚: Your Agile team might be losing productivity without you realizing it!

The big problem? CONTEXT SWITCHING.

Here's what studies say about context switching:

According to the American Psychological Association, switching tasks can cost up to 40% of your productive time.

A study by Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus after an interruption.

According to psychologist Gerald Weinberg, each extra task you switch between eats up 20–80% of your productivity:

For agile teams, this means:
-Slower sprints - More bugs - Reduced productivity - Higher stress levels and potential burnout

So, how can you fix this?

- Set up 'no interruption' time blocks in your team's schedule.
- Prioritize tasks ruthlessly.
- Try the Pomodoro Technique.
- Get better at async communication.

What have you tried to reduce context switching?

[Michael Karl]

Well...

My grandma used to say "Do what you're doing." She ment: Focus on the task at hand. Still true for me.

My personal opinion is that nobody is really capable of multi-tasking. People who seem to be able, can just switch tasks faster.

In my company, we have a dev-team that completes tasks for different stake-holders. Those have their personal goals to reach, so they all try to have their tasks done by the devs. Without any regulation from someone higher in rank and without clear priorities, task-switching is inevitable for those who have to convert concept into code.

To be honest, it's really not that bad, it's an exaggeration.

Still it's a loitering problem and caused by the way our company's hierarchy is set - and sometimes a lack of leadership and awareness.

[Evan Fishman - Rally for Jira]

@Michael Karl Interesting point about it being an organizational structure issue rather than just a productivity challenge.

Sometimes these patterns are built into how companies operate, making them harder to address just at the team level.

Your grandma knows the secrets lol💪🏻💪🏻

[Michael Karl]

Actually I sometimes suspect issues to be caused by structures one level above the layer the issues happen in.

Examples:

- Big projects in infrastructure like building an airport or a nuclear power plant turn out to take considerably longer than expected and the cost is twice, three times and more higher than expected. Suspected reason: When the project is pitched to potential contractors who compete against each other, the contractor with the lowest estimates in time and cost wins the pitch. So the estimates tends to be way too low and are exceeded by far in reality.

- Idealistic people who engage in politics at some point tend to drop most of their idealism or leave politics. Suspected reason: They have to make compromises within their parties and other politicians. They are forced to consent to the realities of the world outside.

Often (not always) especially regular issues are caused by the outside system they happen in.

To understand this doesn't mean that this can easily be solved, because those outside structures usually exist for a good reason and have their advantages - but most of the times there are more than one side to the story.

[Shivam Sharma]

Great post! Context switching is a productivity killer I see teams struggle with often. Focus time blocks and better async communication have worked well for us. Curious to hear what others are trying!

[Michael Karl]

Yep. We also use focus-blocks with turned-off notifications in our team. I personally don't use them, because communication is a priority in my trade and I keep "an open ear" for everybody. But when you'e a developer you should be able to focus on the code you have to write and there should be times you can really close all communications.

To avoid too much context-switching, some of my workmates prefer to have no more then a specified amount of assigned issues on their stacks. Others don't care and just complete their tasks in order of priority rank. Sometimes task-switching is not avoidable, because someone has to wait for somebody else to complete their task or provide an information, and in the meantime they turn to a different task.

[John Funk]

Agreed! Context switching is a killer to productivity. One thing we have tried while in the office is to have a Green Available or Red Busy/Occupied/Not Available (whatever you want to say). Then the team member sets the card on his desk to one of the colors so he is not interrupted during certain times. 

[Evan Fishman - Rally for Jira]

@John Funk haha that's a nice touch.