Every so often you will come across a comparison of drunk driving to trying the same action while sleep deprived.\u00a0 This usually is surprising to spectators when the lack of sleep is shown to be as bad as consuming a lot of alcohol.\u00a0 Although developers tend to be comfortable drinking and drinking alcohol, they are far more known for long hours and lack of sleep.\u00a0 Maybe this correlation can also be\u00a0extended to the larger than average project\u00a0failure\u00a0rates.<\/p>\n
I have met very few developers over the years that are not proud of their caffeine consumption.\u00a0 It is a badge of honor to walk into a late night session with six packs of energy drinks.\u00a0 This becomes their standard approach to the long hours regularly required of those that chose to code as a career.\u00a0 The problem is that the long hours are inflicted as much as they are elected.\u00a0 I have experienced a countless number of projects where the approach to hitting target dates is to cancel time off and extend hours to seventy or more per week.<\/p>\n
The typical attitude is to grab some energy drinks and pour more hours into a project to get it on track.\u00a0 I have no problem with this approach.\u00a0 However, I do question those that are surprised by lower quality after these pushes.\u00a0 You can design and test all you want.\u00a0 However, a team that is comprised primarily of sleep-deprived members is roughly the equivalent of those same people after an evening of adult beverages.<\/p>\n
When you consider how much more mental coding is (as compared to driving) the problems become apparent.\u00a0 You have people that are not at their best mentally doing tasks\u00a0that require concentration and complex thinking.\u00a0 Once I started down this road, it seemed evident that these projects would have high amounts of errors and thus failure rates.\u00a0 The worst part of all this is that those increased errors cause more time to be needed to get tasks done.\u00a0 That leads to less rest and sleep, which leads to more errors.\u00a0 Thus, a death march is born.<\/p>\n
The amusing thing is that many companies have policies that go as far as terminating those that show up for work inebriated.\u00a0 Yet, they have no problem demanding the long hours that can lead to the same mental state.<\/p>\n
There\u00a0are some instances where the long hours come from poor planning or management.\u00a0 Unfortunately, many of the situations arise from heavy competition, low budgets, and the related tight deadlines.\u00a0 You may argue that means that team leaders are left with no choice.\u00a0 I would say otherwise.<\/p>\n
When you look at productivity curves for the average human, you see a drop off as the day gets “too long.” Studies show the length of a comfortable (and productive) workday varies from worker to worker.\u00a0 Nevertheless, we can work with averages and observation.<\/p>\n
I recommend that adding hours and pushing for longer work weeks be done in an incremental way.\u00a0 Ease your way into it earlier in a project if it looks like it will be needed.\u00a0 You can then closely observe the developers and bug rates to see how things deteriorate.\u00a0 At some point, there will be a diminishing return that makes long hours not only useless but detrimental.\u00a0 Once you have that hard limit, you are better served to add resources or accepting slipped dates.<\/p>\n
Developers may like to be “edgy” by embracing sleep loss and long hours.\u00a0 However, this is not a productive approach to software.\u00a0 Maybe treating them as imperfect humans will help improve project failure rates.<\/p>\n
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Every so often you will come across a comparison of drunk driving to trying the same action while sleep deprived.\u00a0 This usually is surprising to spectators when the lack of sleep is shown to be as bad as consuming a lot of alcohol.\u00a0 Although developers tend to be comfortable drinking and drinking alcohol, they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[31,9,34],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-special-topics","tag-developer","tag-projects","tag-software-development"],"yoast_head":"\n