Healthy Teams Miss Deadlines
When you put in extra effort to “get something over the finish line”, you artificially inflate your capacity for work. The more you dip into this “reserve capacity”, the more and more others will expect that as the norm.
They’ll say -
- “Last iteration you completed x amount of work, so let’s plan that same amount for next iteration” (with no regard to how much extra time was put in to make last iteration happen)
- “You were willing to work through the weekend last time. We just need you to do it one more time”
- “I know the requirements keep changing, but we need this done by tomorrow anyway”
When you work overtime, you actually prevent the root problem from being addressed.
The timeline will stay tight, the requirements will stay poor, the team will continue to skip testing to meet arbitrary dates, despite the long-term maintenance burden they’re accruing.
Healthy teams let the project plan fail.
Healthy teams force the hard conversations that failure brings. Healthy teams have the stakeholder engagement needed to then fix the true underlying problems.
Don’t mask the problem by trying to be the hero…
... You’re actually the villain — you’re perpetuating an unhealthy work environment.
