The 100% Utilization Myth

The 100% Utilization Myth

Many organizations in which I’ve coached are concerned when the people on their teams aren’t being “utilized” at 100% of their capacity. This is bad, because a team’s capacity is simply a multiple of the number of team members and the number hours available to be utilized.

A Thought Exercise

When the CPU on your computer reaches 100% utilization, what happens?

Learn to say, “No.”

If we don’t say no, we take on too much, our processing and communication ability suffers, and we end up disappointing those we are trying to help.

Conclusion

Software development requires substantially different ways to make teams and the individual people on them as productive as possible.

Why does anyone think that 100% utilization is a good thing?

If we’re pushing individuals and teams to 100% capacity, the quality of work and therefore the productivity of the team will be reduced

For a team:

Pull less work into a sprint even if velocity says you should be able to pull more

Source

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