Mental Workload

Mental Workload is a concept in psychology describing the quantity of cognitive resources needed to perform a certain task. The current research is mostly focused on Mental Workload for individuals, though there are some initial studies related to Mental Workload for Teams.

This concept is, in our opinion, very important in large-scale development: to have Teams capable of working on end-to-end products, they need to keep control of their development activities: the larger the product the more, in general, the amount of information a Team need to juggle with, thus creating Mental Workload.

We suggest that, as part of the experiments and improvement activities, there should be also initiative to reduce Mental Workload.

Note how this concept is closer to the concept of Cognitive Load described in the popular book Team Topologies.

Reference: Longo, L., Wickens, C. D., Hancock, G., & Hancock, P. A. (2022). Human Mental Workload: A Survey and a Novel Inclusive Definition. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 883321. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883321