Article / Video describing Context Shift

stunmer · 18-10-2017 01:57PM #1

In my team we often get late changes from the business. This results in a developer dropping what they are currently working on and switching to a "higher priority" task.

Once the "higher priority task" is resolved the developer returns back to the original task. However after switching back the developer takes longer than originally estimated to finish the original task in switching his / her concentration to another task.

Pretty sure this is described as "Context Shift".

I haven't found any really good articles / videos on it but I want to send something to the business stakeholders to give them a reasonable idea on what these changes in priority do to the productivity of the team.

Anyone have any good info on this? Articles / Video would be ideally be simple for the business to understand

TrueDub · 18-10-2017 02:57PM

I think the more common term is "context-switching", after the process CPUs use to manage multiple processes.

I found one promising article for you - https://www.forbes.com/sites/timfrancis/2017/06/12/the-real-cost-of-context-switching/#68ec9dfc2623

There's bound to be others.

Article / Video describing Context Shift

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