Overloaded software developers make mistakes and are unhappy. In the worst case, they fall ill and show symptoms known as burnout. Burnout symptoms among software developers are more common than you might expect. Developers affected by burnout can be out of work for months at a time. It should be a task of the project management to identify the triggering stress factors as early as possible and to take appropriate countermeasures!
In the following, we show from our own experience as leading developers and from some special publications 10 key indicators/factors, clustered in 5 main categories, that increase the stress level in the team unnecessarily (!) and thus also increase the risk of a burnout of individual team members in a software development project.
Fast moving targets
1. Many and rapidly changing tasks. For example a developer works on many new features at the same time and only a few get actually finished.
2. The developer constantly switches between maintenance/bug-fixing and feature development without being able to work through the individual topics in a structured manner.
3. Working under time or budget pressure on too many parts of the code base at the same time without getting into a productive rhythm of work.
High share of non-value-added development tasks
4. A lot of unplanned "firefighting" in the area of maintenance and support instead of dealing with the much more "exciting" development of new features/innovations.
5. A high proportion of work on the further development of code parts with high technical debt that are error-prone and difficult to grasp.
Added to this is the developer's knowledge that there is a lack of planned capacity to reduce this technical debt. This is a very stressful situation, as despite all the developer's efforts, the software quality will continue to decline.
Too high a workload for the experienced developers
6. Too few developers in the project have the necessary knowledge and skills to work on important software parts. As a result, they are often physically and at some point also psychologically overloaded.
7. In fast-growing companies, the few experienced developers have to coordinate and control the work of many (new) developers. The real burden is that their own, usually significant, contribution to the project also has to be made.
Missing knowledge management
8. Insufficient cooperation between senior and junior developers leads to poor on-boarding, training and knowledge transfer. The experienced developers are stressed because the newcomers are too slow becoming productive, and the newcomers are stressed because they realize that they are not up to the task or are only allowed to do less relevant work. This leads to burn-out or a bore-out.
9. There is no structured on-boarding process to acquire the necessary skills and abilities.
Poor project planning and management
10. Unrealistic deadlines coupled with notorious under-staffing are the factor that most sustainably creates feelings of being overwhelmed, stressed and frustrated.
Every developer and development manager knows these factors. They often seem unavoidable and yet they can be influenced. To do this, they would have to be used for what they are: they are indicators of a work environment that creates an increased risk for burnout of individual developers.
At Cape of Good Code, we can analyze in which area or in which project an unhealthy level of stress exists and which developers might be most affected by it. This opens up opportunities to initiate timely countermeasures together with the project team. This ensures the health and job satisfaction of the developers and ultimately the quality of the software products and services developed.
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