Efficiency Isn't Effectiveness: Why 100% Capacity Creates Brittle Teams
There's a prevailing notion in some management circles that an engineering team operating at 100% capacity is an optimized team. However, as Katie Leonard aptly put it, "Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. An org running at 100% capacity is brittle, not agile." This resonates deeply with my experience.
This pursuit of maximum utilization reminds me of Will Larson's "four states of engineering":
- Falling behind: Demand outstrips capacity; quality suffers.
- Treading water: Just barely keeping up with essential maintenance and requests.
- Repaying debt: Actively improving system health and addressing past shortcuts.
- Innovating: Having the capacity and stability to explore new ideas and create significant new value.
Unfortunately, there's a market trend that often mistakes "treading water" for the ideal, optimized state. Teams are pushed to maximize output on immediate tasks, leaving no room for strategic thinking, learning, experimentation, or addressing the inevitable technical debt that accumulates.
An organization constantly running at maximum capacity has no slack in the system. This makes it:
- Brittle: Small disruptions (unexpected bugs, urgent requests, team member absence) can cause major delays or failures.
- Reactive: There's no time to be proactive about improving systems, processes, or exploring better solutions. The focus is always on the next fire.
- Stagnant: Innovation requires time to think, experiment, and sometimes fail. A fully utilized team rarely has this luxury. They may become very efficient at executing existing tasks but lose the ability to adapt or create truly new value.
I've had the rare opportunity to lead teams that achieved the "innovating" state, and the difference is night and day compared to the more common state of teams struggling under constant pressure, often leading to burnout. Having breathing room, dedicated time for learning and improvement ("planting trees", not just picking "low hanging fruit"), and the psychological safety to experiment are essential for making real progress, gaining a competitive advantage, and building sustainable, effective engineering organizations.
True effectiveness isn't about maximizing busy-ness; it's about creating the conditions for sustainable delivery, continuous improvement, and impactful innovation.