One At A Time

Mike Cohn - February 10, 2010

Agile ProjectsAtWork

Multitasking is one of the biggest drains on project team performance, but it’s not so easy to convince the powers that be, your peers — or even yourself — to stop the juggling act. Here are some practical suggestions for improving team focus, one project and task at a time.

Editor's Note: This series is excerpted from Mike Cohn’s new book Succeeding With Agile. In part one, the author explained the importance of keeping teams small. In part two, he recommended orienting each team around the delivery of end-to-end user-visible functionality. In part three, he shared factors for making sure the right people get on each team. Here, in part four, he explains the importance of not overloading individuals by forcing them to work on multiple projects.

Individuals assigned to work on multiple projects inevitably get less done. Multitasking — attempting to work on two projects or two things at once — is one of the biggest drains on project team performance. Yet it has unfortunately become one of the busy manager’s most frequently used tools. The reason for this, I believe, is that multitasking creates the illusion of progress and gives the manager the feeling that a problem has been solved. Really, though, in many cases the problem has been made worse.

Consider the case of Jon, a director of database …

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