97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know

Chapter 20. Provide Regular Time to Focus

James Leigh

SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS REGULARLY REPORT that interruptions such as meetings, demos, and urgent bug fixes keep them from completing their work. Typically, a person takes about 20 minutes to regain his train of thought after one of these interruptions. A 5-minute question actually costs 25 minutes, and a quick 10-minute meeting actually costs 30 minutes of potential work. Interruptions and recovery time consume 28% of a typical knowledge worker's day and can cause undue frustration and stress.

To help address this issue, set aside two hours a day (for example, between 10:00 a.m. and noon) that are interruption free. Alternately, you may be able to plan an entire day when no meetings, questions, email, phones, and other distractions are permitted, to allow developers to concentrate and focus on their work. Intel and IBM set aside Fridays, calling them "zero-email Fridays" and "Think Fridays," respectively.

It is equally important that developers know what their top two priorities are so they can plan their work for this period effectively. Even the best-intentioned developers could only randomly guess at what these are if they're not explicitly told what will bring real business value to the project.

Infomania (a debilitating state of information overload) is widely recognized as a major opponent to a developer's productivity. Programming ...