Sustainable pace

Ecris le 2 décembre 2005
Dans la catégorie Articles |

One of the well known XP practices is “sustainable pace”. Until now, I saw it as the idea that the team members should not overwork to avoid to be too much tired, otherwise the moral and the quality will decrease. This is obviously true, but there is more behind this practice.Imagine a project going in a fixed-time mode.

Quite a common situation. Imagine that some technical choices would have been done at the beginning of the project that have as consequence that the team productivity is 50% lower than expected. Suppose now that the team members accept to work nights and days, and to come during the week-end to recover the productivity. The question is: what is their limit? Until which point can they overwork before the collapse. The fact is that nobody knows, even them. Nobody can predict when an overworking team member will stop working.

This shows that a project where the pace is not sustainable is by evidence not managed. If you are in a situation where you have to overwork to finish your project, this is obviously because the project is poorly managed. On the opposite side, if you are in a situation where you ask somebody else to overwork to finish the team-work, ask yourself if your are not putting on him the default of your bad organization.

Hence, never accept to work beyond your sustainable pace. If you do so, you will not help yourself, you will not help your team, and you will not help your manager.

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