Killing the Crunch Mode Antipattern - Chad Fowler

Killing the Crunch Mode Antipattern - Chad Fowler

It makes us stupid . The more I work, the less relevant my years of experience become. I constantly make rookie mistakes. I break things in production. I leave messes behind. I waste hours going down the wrong train of thought. It burns people out, sometimes permanently. They burn up their passion that takes down time to replenish. Unless the non-Crunch work is sufficiently energizing (and frequent), enough crunching can cause your best people to leave. It makes people lazy and less productive . This may seem ironic, but when someone puts in heroic levels of effort, they start to place less value on each minute. I know that if I work all night, then an hour brain-break mid-day sounds very reasonable. The problem is that these breaks become a habit that can persist between Crunch times. It’s a risky way to make your commitments. Crunch Mode means you are using your team bey...

Full article: http://chadfowler.com/blog/2014/01/22/the-crunch-mode-ant...