
How do I tell my team to work more hours to hit a launch date? - edmondlau
http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/blog/why-overtime-doesnt-work
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osteele
This is all good advice; especially that working more hours generally isn't
the answer (and can do more harm than good).

For those cases where it _is_ useful, I would add: * Make it more fun to work
than not to work. Bring in dinners. Invite their families to visit in the
evening. Acknowledge that you're camping out. * Remove non-work obstacles and
distractions. Drive people to and from the train station or their homes. Help
them find babysitting. Do their laundry (yourself, or hire a service). *
Remove work obstacles and distractions. If you're in a big company with
bureaucracy, run interference. Explain that the team is in crunch mode, and do
or defer their expense reports, training procedures, and other overhead. *
Have a nap area. I've only been at one company that had a formal nap room, but
everywhere else has gone through cycles of using a conference room or out-of-
the-way sofa, and then hiring enough people that there's not space for that
any more, and then getting more floorspace, and repeat. During the phases when
there's not an on-site nap room, people either home in the evening and don't
come back, and/or turn braindead and might as well be gone. * Have an end in
sight. If there's not a natural exogenous deadline (such as an industry
event), fake one (this has to be the Solstice release because reasons). It's
particularly important that crunch mode be timeboxed, not feature-boxed; if
you've been in feature-milestone mode, now's the time to pivot. * Work longer
hours yourself. A leader should be first in, last out.

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edmondlau
Good points - I like your framing that crunch mode ought to be time-boxed and
not feature-boxed and generally haven't seen that mindset being used too much.

