About the dangers of part time employment

Part Time is evil.
Not absolute, of course, evil, but in 90% of cases it is.

By part time, I mean “parallel” work on different tasks within different projects and / or in one project but within different areas of competence. "Parallel" in quotes because There is a switch between tasks to their full completion.

Let's try to understand the causes and consequences of such a widespread phenomenon.

What for?

As a rule, part-time employment is used in the following basic cases.
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• To optimize the use of resources
  If an employee solves the task set for half of the working day, it will logically baffle him for the second half (with payment 100% of the time)
• With a lack of competence
  The more unique competencies are concentrated in an individual, the more in demand it becomes and the more projects require their participation.
• Unscheduled tasks
  Well, without them ... It is a reality that unplanned tasks of completely different priorities can arise on any of the projects.

Some may or may not

Do not forget about the staff. There are "rubber" and "non-rubber" people.

The first are quite flexible in their approach to tasks. Any additional activity does not cause them stress, and they feel quite comfortable with a large number of tasks in their hands.

The second ones, on the contrary, build a tough job queue, and any change in it causes stress and, as a result, resistance.

Thus, if we can give “parallel” tasks to employees of the first type, then employees of the second type can only be given under the penalty of execution.

And if by example ...

As an example, you can consider 2 common situations.

Example 1:
The programmer Vasya is sitting and writing the project A. The boss comes to Vasya and speaks in a human voice - but come on, Vasya, in parallel, you connect to project B, because ... Of course, Vasya is “connecting” ...

Example 2:
The programmer Vasya is sitting and writing the project A. He writes long and successfully and at one point offers Vasya an additional project to manage. It is important - the development tasks for Vasily are not removed. Of course, Vasya agrees ...

And what's next ...

And then we risk getting some problems.

From the point of view of the employee:

• Blurred focus effort. When working on one project it is much easier to concentrate than when working on 2-3
• There are additional costa to switch between tasks. I really liked the analogy of Askhat Urazbayev at the Agile training: at a computer, when switching between tasks, at a minimum it is necessary to unload the current one from the memory and load the next one from the queue. This is about the same for people.
• It is necessary to set priorities for projects, and here it is not so important - either independently or by interacting with the project manager.

From the point of view of PMa:

• Projects lose control because it is not possible to understand in advance exactly how much time will be spent on a particular project. Alas, pseudo-agreements will not work here “before lunch we work on project A, then on project B”
• Significantly increases the risk of getting a bottleneck with simultaneous crashes on competing projects

As for the second example - everything is more prosaic here - we no longer have a programmer on the project, and the new PM is messed up. Any new responsibilities should, in my opinion, develop in isolation and purposefully. This is a topic for a separate post.

Classic antipatterns

• Underestimation of tasks. A classic example is “look at that letter.” You need to switch, find a letter, make sure that it is the right letter, read, understand, respond, remember what you did before and what you stopped at ... Well, you understand :)
• Inability to say no. The employee often cannot refuse the supervisor and accepts the task. It is important to understand that not only PM is to blame, but also the employee who accepted the task.
• Lack of basic planning and risk management skills
• ...

What to do about it ...

An ideal case is to avoid party tasks.

If a parallel download does happen, several recommendations will help reduce the risks:

1. Parallel better tasks with polar priorities from a project point of view. Important user story is perfectly combined with the development of new technology. The first works on the project, the second - on the skills of the employee.
2. Clearly limit the limit of work. Yes, in most cases this will not help, but the employee will have orientation points.
3. Limit the duration of this mode of operation. week - ok, 2 - all right, more - get ready for problems
4. Assign part-time tasks to trusted and loyal employees. In case of problems, it is possible to agree with such people quickly and painlessly, without listening to the arguments “I worked on project A, but there was no time left for project B”
5. Create the most comfortable conditions for part-time employee
6. ...

Of course, there are people who can work effectively in part-time mode in the medium and long-term intervals. But about them - some other time.