What makes a team more productive? There are many aspects to increasing productivity, but I believe one of the most important ones is keeping the team focused on one thing. Teams that can keep single project flow have much more success in moving that project along. You hear it time and again about single piece flow and how that maximizes productivity, but how does that look practically?
Business usually can’t afford to work on just one thing, so teams don’t get afforded that luxury either. So in truth it comes down to prioritization; if the team is self organizing, then they understand the business’ priorities and choose to work on what will deliver the most value at that time. That last part of the phrase is critical. Teams (and businesses) always have multiple priorities. But the critical factor is determining what will provide the most value for the effort at any given time.
In my personal experience, the most effective I’ve seen a team is when they are focused on a single project/goal. Tickets are burned down quick, bugs are identified, triaged, and patched almost same day. I’ve seen relatively complex tickets with cycle times of hours. You get to stay in your deep work “zone” as it is because you’re not swapping context, you’re just focusing slightly off center when asked a question (because its the same project). The only other time I’ve felt that productive is working solo on projects.
Counter to that, a team that feels unproductive is chipping away and 3-5 projects at the same time. Usually at this load, its one engineer per project. But each engineer has their own questions and has their own PRs, so every other engineer has to context switch several times a day in order to move anything along. Each break in concentration to swap to the other project just destroys my productivity.
Overall, I suggest limiting a teams projects (and their WIP) to keep them working efficiently and keeping projects moving swiftly. The key factor that the team needs from the business is a true north star/priority to work on. Once they have that, they can define the problem and break it down and it makes for smooth sailing.