Xjyuk

I've been working in a large IT company in a 2 man team, for the past 3 years. We are very dedicated and we have a strong image as serious and reliable. Every important development comes our way.

The number of projects has increased and it's getting harder and harder to split our focus between multiple projects (having a high degree of parallelism - and this will start to affect our output eventually).

We've been asking for a team increase, but since we deliver in an acceptable manner, basically we've been told that there is no need, regardless of our stress and overtime.

Now, perhaps I don't know how to properly raise this issue in order to have better odds, so here is my question:

Question: How to properly justify a team increase given that we don't have an output issue? (we are delivering in an acceptable manner for now)

Some additional context information.

A nearby team (of 4 members), whose output is poor, got an additional member.

In terms of importance, my teams products are far more important than the other teams products. This makes it even more frustrating and strange to me (my intuition says: invest where the outcome is good, not vice versa).

Question: How to properly justify a team increase given that we don't have an output issue? (we are delivering in an acceptable manner already)

Stop working overtime and see if your team can still deliver in an acceptable manner. By working overtime, you are simply adding hours of work to each member of the team, which is not much different than those being the hours worked by a new team member. The downside to working overtime is that you are stressed and probably will eventually burn out. So, stop working overtime and then evaluate if you still need a new team member.

A nearby team (of 4 members), whose output is poor, got an additional member.

This is a potential red flag for me. Of course, some of the times, the output deficiency is due to not having enough staff, in which case it makes sense to add headcount and continue monitoring output. But if there's a more general pattern of rewarding poor-performing teams with headcount, while high-performing teams are left to do "hero" work, that's toxic.

Further: Regardless of what's going on with the other team, a work environment that has handwaves away the very real problem of ongoing "heroic effort" is, in itself, toxic. It leads to mistakes & rework, burnout, low morale, turnover, etc., all of which are costly to the business in the long run. Of course, sometimes heroic effort is needed to meet critical deadlines, etc., but working long hours/weekends/etc should be the exception, not the norm.

We've been asking for a team increase, but since we deliver in an acceptable manner, basically we've been told that there is no need, regardless of our stress and overtime.

The way you deal with this is probably in your planning sessions. Assuming you're following some sort of sprint/agile development, commit to reasonable sprint points that don't require heroic efforts (routine after-hours or weekend work). Push back when product owners expect more features to be delivered in a given sprint.

You have past sprints to indicate that your team delivers X points in a 2-week sprint, you can't reasonably deliver X + 20 points in a 2-week sprint. If they insist on increased output, then you have metrics that justify your demand for additional headcount. If this is in flux, then it may be a part-time contractor rather, or maybe you loan someone over from another team/department that has extra bandwidth.

This is a bit of a passive approach, of course. But they've been passively trampling on your acceptance of increased workloads till now. You've unknowingly set expectations that you'll work overtime (if you're salaried, this is probably unpaid and mostly unrecognized, too!) and late nights and weekends to deliver. You need to slowly, but carefully back this expectation down to a more reasonable level.

Contact the right people

• HR, and there somebody that is truly engaged in wellbeing and has the power drive the change


• A senior manager that has enough experience and authority


• The source of the tasks

Do not undervalue soft power. A manager that is not necessarily that senior in the hierarchy can have seniority from the years of working valued, sometimes even connection at the top of the organisation.

Use other metrics to justify your case

• Overtime


• Action points per worker


• Number of projects you are working on


• People that have left


• Conversations about different career possibilities raised by the members

Also, remember to have some numbers from history.

Use the right words

• You are highly concerned about the wellbeing


• Your team is starting to lose their drive


• Any buzzword the HR is using for the issue works.

If they see only synonyms they might not recognise it as being important. The words the managers recognise for being held accountable in their scorecards.

Small teams are harder to justify a new team member because the increase in team size is greater. In your case, you are asking for a 50% increase in team size, relative to that other team which only received a 25% increase in size.

Unfortunately, unless you are consistently working more than 10-20% overtime each, that 50% bump is just going to be hard. What you need to show is that either you just can't handle the workload (it sounds like you can ...) or you are working so much overtime that it isn't sustainable.

The other answers rightly point out that what you're doing is somehow "wrong", but it is really only wrong in the long term and is unsustainable. From your employer's perspective it is better to have 2 employees working 110% than three employees working 75%. Two employees working 120-130% isn't sustainable. You need to quantify how how much you're doing and show that the work load is inappropriate and unsustainable.

Edited to add --

Just to clarify, the OP is in a sticky situation precisely because of the small team size. The only thing harder than adding the second team member is adding the second. An alternative to adding a full-time 3rd member is borrowing someone from another team. That's an approach my various teams have had to use to demonstrate "need".

You need to determine your actual capacity, make a list of all the tasks with their sizes, show the decision makers that list with a line drawn between what will fit and what won't, and ask them to decide where to cut. It's their job to decide whether it's more important to save money on staffing or to finish more projects. It's your job to make sure they have the necessary information to make that decision.

I know we get emotionally invested in our work. For the most part, that's a good thing. However, businesses are never going to be able to fund everything that developers want to do. There are always going to be trade offs. Personally, if trade offs are inevitable, I want to make sure what actually gets done is what is most valuable to the company. That only gets done if the decision makers have an accurate picture of the costs.