How do the environment and corporate culture impact managerial decisions? In what context does development multitasking make sense? Here are three situations that make sense to me. (And I'm on the developer's side of this discussion!)
1. Specialized skills. This would be those people that management is lucky to have one of, and their existence has to be spread across several projects to justify their existence. DBAs, architects, object specialists. Would agile coaches be included?
2. A project is completed, the programmers moved on to the next project and: - a defect is located that needs to be corrected. - the client requests a series of improvements. Who better than the original developer(s)?
3. A developer hits a wait state based and can't move forward until something from someone else arrives. Why not let them get started on something while they're waiting?
What other contexts make sense for multitasking development?
DonGray 2006.05.29