Building a Formula 1 Race Car
Teams often measure velocity as an indicator of both team health and productivity. The higher the velocity, the better the team works together and completes work. When team members change, velocity goes down. When priorities change, velocity goes down. While it’s not as fragile as glass, you want to avoid too many changes once a team gets going. Like a Formula-1 race car, once it’s moving, you naturally start wondering how to get more.
I am often asked to add more developers to increase productivity. Sometimes I inherit a budget from a previous CTO who budgeted for several additional developers through the upcoming year. We need to add more… umph to our race car by adding a bigger engine. However, we will crash into barricades if we can’t steer around turns. If we can’t slow down before we get to those turns, the steering won’t help either. If you put a bigger engine in the car, you’ll crash into the barricades faster.
Like our race car, sometimes you need to improve your steering by adding people to Product Management. You might be better off tapping the brakes to improve product quality and reduce rework. Measuring and evaluating your capacity, in addition to your velocity, in each of the roles will tell you where you need to enhance your race car. Adding more QA could help your team complete testing without carrying over to the next sprint. Adding more Product Owners could help develop requirements and clear roadblocks for developers faster. Like a race car, you must balance the steering, engine, and brakes as you drive faster. The goal is to cross the finish line, not crash faster…