Adding New Staff Doesn’t Speed Up The Project
In today’s world, productivity has a different meaning. Jobs are less factory-like and the actions to complete a task are less repetitive.
Since 1765, there are four industrial revolutions. Below are the main characteristics of each industrial revolution accordingly to how UpKeep categorizes it.
First Industrial Revolution is Coal in 1765.
Second Industrial Revolution: Gas in 1870.
Third Industrial Revolution: Electronics and Nuclear in 1969.
Fourth Industrial Revolution: Internet and Renewable Energy in 2000.
We are currently in the fourth industrial revolution, though some might argue that we could be already living in the fifth industrial revolution, which involves Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data (BD), the Internet of Things (IoT), digital platforms, augmented and virtual reality, and 3D printing.
I took a module on Global Economic Dimensions. [Disclaimer: This article is not sponsored in any way, I am sharing my thoughts on what I learned during the module.] The professor mentioned that in the past, most of the jobs were factory-related. Productivity was easier to define; the more units produced, the more productive the factory is. So, employees can work overtime to accomplish more work or employers hire more employees to complete more work.
However, in today’s world, productivity has a different meaning. Jobs are less factory-like and the actions to complete a task are less repetitive. So, here’s the catch: does putting in more hours help you to achieve more work? Or can you take fewer hours to still achieve the same level of productivity? Also, here is where many are debating whether the 4-day work week is more productive than the 5-day work week, but it can be another article on its own.
So back to our discussion on why adding new staff to existing projects does not speed up the project! Just like a typical Math question on Proportion: The more men were hired to paint, the fewer days are needed to complete the project. However, adding more people to the orchestra doesn’t mean the piece will be played faster. It just does not make sense. There are rules in music, adding more players to the orchestra does not change the rules of the orchestra piece.
Take a look at how a teacher set a proportion question to test if her students are being attentive!
Compare a senior data analyst and a junior data analyst. Will they be able to build X number of dashboards in the same amount of time? Compared to his senior, the junior data analyst would probably need to put in more time to do the dashboards.
So, when companies add new staff to the projects (especially less factory-like projects, where the tasks are less repetitive), always remember that the existing staff will need to take time off their own schedule to conduct knowledge transfer sessions with the new staff so that her/she will be up to speed as the existing project team. In other words, there are opportunity costs to be considered. Therefore, should existing staff spend time guiding the new staff or will it make more sense for the existing staff to just do it on their own as they are more familiar with it?
As the world is evolving from factory to knowledge work, companies need to reconsider whether the benefit of adding new employees to existing projects exceeds the opportunity cost of existing project members shifting focus to the new members from the actual work. This same problem was also described in the Phoenix Project, Unicorn Project, and DevOps book.
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