How to justify getting additional team member when the current team is doing well?

Question

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)

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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).

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My summary of the great content found in the answers:

• make sure that the extra team member is really needed (which can be achieved by reducing overtime)
• prepare metrics (e.g.: number of projects, action points per worker, backlog size over time, burndown chart)
• contact the right people and have metrics prepared

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Conclusion:

We've tried using the advice received in this post and...

We've had another member added to the team. Unfortunatelly this colleague always has other priorities outside the team. On top of this, we've had our managers changed to a manager with whom we have a poor relationship.

Given this situation, we both applied for positions in a different department. In this department the teams are already formed and they have different challanges (technical, arhitectural, performance) and they also have a healthy culture of doing IT development (clear requirements, prioritization, formalized code review and most of all, real teamwork).

We applied for the new positions about 4 months ago. During this time, no alignment was achieved on getting replacements and doing a handover. The current manager slows everything down as much as possible.

At this moment only one of us was moved officially (given an intervention from higher management), while still having to offer 100% help on any type of emergency. The hiring process started this month and some interviews took place in order to find replacements. For my colleague to also move we need to have at least one trained replacement (however, I expect that resistance will be encountered and they will ask to have all replacements trained before he moves - which would be unacceptable. No one should wait for so much months in uncertainty and pressure, because finding replacements should not take 4 months to begin the process of hiring replacements).

So the short conclusion:

If you are in a similar unfortunate situation, of having to do lots of overtime and additional resouces (new colleagues) are not given when clearly needed, try to get them, but know when to fold and look for a change. It's just not worth it and you are really shielding the people unwilling to take action by sacrificing yourself. Do what is right for you.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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".

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

one of you two should become a parent and leave for a year. you will get a replacement worker and if he does well he can probably stay when the parent comes back.

also: bus factor

btw, if you do scrum on a two person team, you are not doing scrum! :-D show them the scrum guide where it says that a team size below three is not recommendend.

some answers are tackling the problem about workload wrong: if you now work 20% more, you are at 240% capacity. adding another person does not mean you will be each working 80%, more probably is that you will get assigned some more projects until you reach 300% capacity. make sure it stays at 300%!

you could argue that a person added to your team will perform better and more efficient than adding him to another team. you could also borrow people from other teams and make them more efficient. you will have a steady supply of workers if this becomes known.

Answer 7

You are concerned that it may be or seem unnecessary to hire a new team member as long as your current output is fine.

Let me clarify what this implies: Additional personal only gets hired AFTER problems have arisen. Meaning in some way there has already been damage to your team, some budget, some relation to a customer, product quality etc. THEN you START SEARCHING for new IT-personal.

Let me also walk you through the common process of hiring IT-personal: According to a recent article published in Handelsblatt (in Germany) the process of hiring IT staff is one of the longest across all sectors, taking in the mean around 200 days from planning a position, then publishing, assessing candidates etc. Taking considerably longer if you are looking for talent which is highly specialized, knowledge of niche-technologies, searching for rather unpopular stacks of technology etc. Also mind you, that your overall attractiveness as an employer can play a heavy role in this process. IT is part of the MINT-sciences. MINT graduates are recruited by all lines of business, meaning there is heavy competition which is why some companies I worked with there unable to fill IT-positions for well over a year until the lack of man-power caused significant damage to the companies processes and the same positions where offered with increased salary. And just from my personal experience: Some positions still took well over 100 additional days to fill, even with increased salary. Some took a whole deal of negotiating other benefits like home office, sabbatical etc, since especially younger professionals are expecting more than just money these days.

To sum it all up: If you are not working for a well renowned company with a modern appeal, you might find it difficult to recruit new MINT-talent within, let’s say, 150 days. So, you definitely do not want to start with this process AFTER things have already gone south, but well in advance when there are clear indicators, that the workload is too much for your current team-size and will stay this way for the foreseeable future.