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).
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
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.