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