Why IT Teams Spend Most of Their Time on Overhead, Not Actual Work
By
Leon Adato
Toasted golden, schmeared with insight. Top of the rack.
Summary
The article argues that IT and engineering teams aren't slow because they're inefficient, but because a significant portion of their time is consumed by overhead tasks like downloading repositories, updating libraries, gathering requirements, and aligning dependencies — the "work about the work" rather than the actual work itself.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledIf you spend any time talking to engineering teams, platform teams, or IT leaders, you'll hear a familiar refrain: projects are slow, progress feels uneven, and somehow there's never enough time to get the real work done.
The easy conclusion is that teams are inefficient. That's usually wrong.
A significant portion of time in IT isn't spent on 'the work.' It's spent on everything around it.
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