Extreme Programming advocate Ron Jeffries recently posted a very good article on the Impact of Overtime on Productivity. Among many other good points, he lists the following indicators that things might be going wrong. I am sure some of these will look familiar to many of you…

  • Is the ratio of test lines to code lines going down?
  • Is the ratio of customer tests to features going down?
  • Is time spent fixing bugs going up?
  • Are people pairing less often?
  • Are integrations taking longer?
  • Is the build broken light coming on more often and staying on longer?
  • Are cosmetic tasks in the code being skipped?
  • Is the refactoring board filling up with red cards?
  • Is the team room messier than it used to be?
  • Are there more food containers in the waste cans?
  • Are people asking more questions about what is going on in the standup meeting?
  • Have you stopped even having a standup meeting?
  • Are there more arguments, more people who are angry with each other?