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What are the signs of an understaffed DevOps team?
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Problem
What are the typical signs and signals of a DevOps team being understaffed? How would you justify/explain a request for a new addition to a team?
I would love to keep the question generic, but here is some additional information:
We currently have 2 DevOps specialists working together as a team, but the demands and the amount and complexity of products are growing. We are thinking to request a new addition to the team, but having some difficulties explaining and proving why it would be a good idea.
I would love to keep the question generic, but here is some additional information:
We currently have 2 DevOps specialists working together as a team, but the demands and the amount and complexity of products are growing. We are thinking to request a new addition to the team, but having some difficulties explaining and proving why it would be a good idea.
Solution
There are four main reasons why you can feel your team is understaffed:
Start with a review of the first three points. Read the Phoenix Project on ideas how to do the first. Ask yourself for every task you help anyone with if it should be done at all and if it is you that should be doing the task or if you should simply enable whoever needs it done to do it themselves. This will give you some documentation on why all the work you do is necessary.
Next review the four types of work mentioned in the Phoenix project:
If the work of your team is sustainable, you will spend roughly the same amount of time on each of the four. If the unplanned work starts to creep up close to 50% of your time, it is a sign you are definitely understaffed.
You should be able to hire to stay about one person ahead of the unplanned work reaching 25% of your time, otherwise, one person leaving will send your entire team into a tailspin you might never recover from. Overprovisioning of people and technology have same reasons and benefits.
- Poor organization and planning of work
- Doing work someone else should be doing
- Doing work that should not be done at all
- Being actually understaffed
Start with a review of the first three points. Read the Phoenix Project on ideas how to do the first. Ask yourself for every task you help anyone with if it should be done at all and if it is you that should be doing the task or if you should simply enable whoever needs it done to do it themselves. This will give you some documentation on why all the work you do is necessary.
Next review the four types of work mentioned in the Phoenix project:
- Business Projects - what you do for other teams in the organization
- Internal Projects - what you do to make your work easier in future
- Scheduled Maintenance - what you do to keep the lights on
- Unplanned Interrupts - what you do because something went wrong
If the work of your team is sustainable, you will spend roughly the same amount of time on each of the four. If the unplanned work starts to creep up close to 50% of your time, it is a sign you are definitely understaffed.
You should be able to hire to stay about one person ahead of the unplanned work reaching 25% of your time, otherwise, one person leaving will send your entire team into a tailspin you might never recover from. Overprovisioning of people and technology have same reasons and benefits.
Context
StackExchange DevOps Q#2883, answer score: 13
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