I'm looking for help in justifying to HR to encourage staff to put in
humane working hours instead of the all-nighters they do now with what
I assume is very low productivity and quality of life which will
eventually get them used to doing less per hour and having no life to
of their own where they can vent their stress and participate in their
own social lives and the families they support.

I have a feeling this will cause issues for them and then turn around
and smack the company in the face when people burn out or their lives
get enough to bounce off back at the office.

The supporting information I'm looking for should cover management and
technical staff.  I don't mind the occasional extra hours here and
then, but that being a constant just doesn't look right to me.

Help! :-)

Please be brief and focused on the above.  All referenced material
must be accessible for free from the Internet in text, PDF or any
other format that has a free reader.

Thank you.

/Dusty

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Request for Question Clarification by easterangel-ga on 27 Jan 2004 01:29 PST

Hi dustydunne!

I have found articles that will be relevant to your cause but the
concern is much more on the worker side, the one who has to be in
action during the production side. Usually the workplace are in
factories and production plants and not in the management arena. Will
this be ok as a legitimate answer?

Thanks!

---

Request for Question Clarification by maniac-ga on 27 Jan 2004 04:55 PST

Hello Dustydune,

Hmm. I certainly have some books [out of print?] with this kind of
information for software development. For example, a model of software
development productivity that takes into account reduced productivity
when adding staff [training, coordination], overtime [both burnout and
recovery], and other factors. Would identification of these books, a
summary of key conclusions, and references to other papers [on line]
that support the conclusions be an adequate answer?

  --Maniac

---

Clarification of Question by dustydune-ga on 27 Jan 2004 08:35 PST

Hi Easterangel,

I'm interested in staff, office staff, being management and techncial
programmers and sales/marketing.  Not factories and plants as I think
the difference would be huge when it comes to high volume of
repeatative work in plants and factories compared with office work
that might not be similar or repeatative in its majority.

As such, that wouldn't be an appropriate answer for my question.

/Dusty

---

Clarification of Question by dustydune-ga on 27 Jan 2004 08:55 PST

HI, Maniac,

The source isn't important, I would like an argument which is likely
to come from a paper or a study or an article that puts into
consideration staff in an office working environment where management
and development staff and the impact of spending long hours at work
repeatitively which is assumed will likely result in more productivity
where it doesn't afrer the burnout burns in and you end up with people
getting used to spending a lot of time at the office adjusting their
effort and results to longer hours.

/Dusty

Hello Dustydune,

The effects of excessive overtime have been written up in several
forms. Some references are quite general such as:
  http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/story/0,10801,77681,00.html
which is an article from Computerworld written in January 2003. Scroll
down to the end for the effects of hidden overtime. Effects include
lack of new ideas, illness, and other symptoms.

  http://homes.jcu.edu.au/~ccmsn/cp3110/a2/lecture_v1.html
is a portion of class notes which focuses on team productivity and has
some guidelines related to overtime at the end. Effects stated include
increased defects, reduced creativity, and burnout.

  http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_viewpoints_comp_time
focuses primarily on the problems of compensatory time off (comp time)
but also notes that families need predictable work hours to arrange
child care and other needs.

The references above should get you a feel for the kind of factors
that are involved. The next two are books I have found to be
particularly valuable.

Perhaps the best in depth look at overtime (and a variety of other
people related issues) is in "Peopleware: Productive Projects and
Teams" by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister.
  http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html
The publisher has excerpts included as well as several reviews and
links to on line bookstore sites (or check your local library). Be
sure to read the excerpt "Teamicide Revisited" since it touches on
overtime in two different ways.

My copy is the first edition, where chapter 3 titled "Vienna Waits for
You" talks in depth about "Spanish Theory Management". A portion of
this has been put on line at
  http://www.hackvan.com/pub/stig/rants/stig--on-work-and-slavedriving
Scroll down to the end (footnote 4) for a sample of the writing. As
another example, consider part of the chapter introduction:
  "There were two divorces that he [the project manager] could trace
directly to the overtime his people were putting in, and one of his
worker's kids had gotten into some kind of trouble with drugs,
probably because the father had been too busy for parenting during the
last year. Finally there had been the nervous breakdown of the test
team leader."

There are a number of other factors that DeMarco and Lister go through
in this book. Some are quite simple such as putting the team together,
reducing interruptions, single assignments, adequate space and
resources to work in and so on. If you haven't had a chance to read it
- by all means try to do so.

A more technical look at software productivity in general, and the
effects of overtime in particular is "Software Project Dynamics: An
Integrated Approach" by Tarek Abdel-Hamid, and Stuart E. Madnick. It
is an expensive book ($74 at Amazon) and somewhat dated (1991) but it
includes a comprehensive simulation model of software development.

This book refers to "overwork" as a factor describing both overtime
and the reduction of slack time (boosting the actual fraction of man
days on project tasks). In part
  "As employees work harder to handle shortages in man-days, their
tolerance for working harder decreases ....
This is described by the complementary term of Exhaustion Factor or
Exhaustion Level. The model has a nominal 50 work days for exhausting
the development team and a four week (20 work day) recovery period
where the team will refuse to overwork (after being exhausted). The
full explanation of overwork and exhaustion takes about four pages,
but the essence is as I described here.

The simulation model is based on a wide range of research - there are
over 250 publication references in it, and a number of interviews were
held at a variety of facilities. If you decide to look at this and the
model it contains, you can do a series of "what if" analyses to
determine the best approach to manage your development teams.

Citeseer also is a good resource, check out both
  http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/context/301297/0
  http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/context/205444/0
for references to these two books in on line papers. These other
papers should also provide some additional information if needed on
overtime and other staffing / management issues.

Another related reference:
  http://www.itworld.com/Career/2019/ITW010515slack/
looking at another book by DeMarco, making some of the same kind of arguments.

Voluntary overtime is discussed in depth at
  http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdvolot.htm
which includes some nice charts showing the relationship between
distance [duration] and speed [performance] as well as describing
several drawbacks of overtime.

For more possible sources, try search phrases such as:
  peopleware demarco lister
  defects overtime
  drawbacks overtime
  overtime demarco

If you need some more ammunition, I would be glad to look for more
references if there is some specific kind of data you need beyond what
I provided. Please use the clarification request as needed.

  --Maniac

Dustydune --

Lots of research has been done on the effect of what are called in the
U.S. "swing shifts" or changing 8-hour work schedules.  Despite the
proof that it's damaging to health and encourages sleep while on-duty,
who uses it most?  Hospitals!

Try a Google search strategy on "swing shifts" and you'll find
articles on sleep cycles and sleep deprivation, including this one:
The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin
"The Effects of Sleep Deprivation"
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2194/7_70/77417463/p1/article.jhtml?term=

Finally, I should also note that sleep deprivation can have disastrous
effects on certain types of conditions, such as the relatively common
bipolar disorder:
http://bipolar.about.com/cs/sleep/

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Hello Omnivorous,

I wasn't really into swinging schedules, more like when you're at a
9-5 job, but the company encourages that you do more work and
structure the bonuses around hours and more results per day.  on the
long term, I expect people to not do well when they keep leaving work
at 8 or 9pm as a common leaving time.

I believe that staying within the working hours in the majority of
cases would keep people mentally and physically healthier and more
productive.  We should work at improving the productivity within those
hours we have them there instead of allowing them to figure out how to
utilize there hours there inefficiently and end up using up more time
to be more productive.  Want to find the right amount of time for
development and management staff and then I'll move on to improving
their results within those hours to stay within healthier boundries.

Would that make my goal clearer? :-)

/Dusty