5 Surprising Habits that Slow Your IT Development

As the proverb goes, hell is paved with good intentions. Most bottlenecks in IT development happen as the result of good intentions that have gone bad. In this article, we’ll discuss surprising habits that slow down your IT processes and what you can do to speed them up.

Habit No.1: Multitasking

The truth is our brain isn’t equipped for multitasking – our short-term memory can store only five-nine things at once. When we try to accomplish several different tasks, our brain can’t encode them fully in short-term memory and then move into long-term memory to recall later. And if we can’t recall information, we can’t use it.

Instead of actually helping you, multitasking works against you. This is especially true for software development projects. The studies suggest every interruption and switching from one task to another cost 15 minutes of lost developer productivity.

Tip: All projects should be fully stuffed – in other words, these are projects where you don’t have to wait for a developer to become available. It’s better to limit the number of simultaneous projects so that team members don’t have to multitask.

Habit No.2: Focusing on projects instead of releases

Traditionally, organisations focus on projects. And as projects get bigger, the possibility of delay and the risk of failure increase.

Tip: Rely on releases instead of projects. This approach is well-known as Scrum provides the framework for continual feedback which ensures a better quality, decreased time to the market, increased ROI and fewer costly defects, increased project control, reduced risks, higher customer satisfaction and team morale.

Habit No. 3: Insisting on 100% perfect solutions

What project leaders have to understand, there is no perfect solution to a problem and you have to take an incremental approach.

Tip: Don’t look for a perfect solution – design a good one quickly and keep moving, providing enhancements and getting closer to the perfect solution. Think about new opportunities and new problems and focus on the best approaches to solve them.

Habit No. 4: Focusing on cutting costs

When you cut costs, it’s a defensive strategy. On one hand, it’s important and has some value, but on the other hand, if you want to win – you need to attack! In business terms, this means investing – money and time. Cutting costs means cutting investments in progress, innovation and growth.

Tip: If everyone focuses on cutting costs, nobody focuses on speeding things up. And if you don’t invest, you don’t grow. Remember this. Always.

Habit No. 5: Resting on laurels

Nothing slows down your operations more than resting on laurels and allowing the culture of complacency dominate in your organisation. Everyone is happy with the previous achievements and doesn’t see any need to speed up or innovate.

Tip: Encourage team members to try something innovative. Even if it doesn’t work out, congratulate them on taking the risk and shaking things up.