Every development team has someone everyone turns to when things get complicated.
They're the developer who can troubleshoot a difficult bug, review a complicated pull request, help a junior team member, and still manage to finish their own assignments.
They're experienced, dependable, and usually the person managers trust with important work.
But there's a catch.
The better they are at handling difficult situations, the more people start relying on them.
At first, this doesn't seem like a problem. Tasks are moving, code reviews are happening, and the sprint board looks reasonably healthy.
Then, slowly, things start getting stuck.
A pull request is waiting for approval. Another developer can't move forward without technical guidance. QA is waiting for a fix, while an important task remains unfinished.
Before anyone realizes what's happening, the entire sprint starts depending on one person's availability.
It's an easy problem to overlook, but an important one: your most dependable developer can eventually become the biggest bottleneck in your project.
1. Why a balanced sprint board doesn't always mean a balanced workload
Let's take a simple example.
Imagine a development team of five people. Each developer is assigned five tasks for the sprint.
At first glance, the distribution looks fair. Everyone has the same number of assignments.
But does that mean everyone is carrying the same workload?
Not necessarily.
One developer might be handling five straightforward UI changes. Another might be working on complex backend functionality involving database modifications, integrations, and testing.
A third developer could be responsible for implementation while also reviewing pull requests submitted by the rest of the team.
The task count is identical, but the effort involved is entirely different.
This is why looking at the number of assigned tasks doesn't give managers the full picture.
A more realistic workload assessment should consider:
- How complex each task is.
- How much time and effort it is expected to require.
- Whether other tasks depend on its completion.
- What responsibilities the developer already has.
- How much time goes into code reviews and supporting colleagues.
- Whether unexpected bugs or urgent requests have been added.
A sprint board might look perfectly balanced, while most of the important work still depends on just one or two people.
2. The downside of always relying on your most experienced developer
There's a pattern that appears in many engineering teams.
Someone consistently delivers good work, so naturally, managers begin assigning them more responsibility.
They're asked to handle complicated implementations, review important code, and investigate issues that other developers haven't been able to resolve.
Over time, their role starts expanding beyond their original assignments.
They're no longer just responsible for completing their own work. They're also helping everyone else move forward.
Consider what a typical day might look like:
- Morning: Working on an assigned feature.
- Mid-morning: Reviewing another developer's pull request.
- Afternoon: Investigating a bug reported by QA.
- Later in the day: Helping a teammate understand a technical implementation.
- Before wrapping up: Returning to the feature that was supposed to be the main priority.
The problem isn't necessarily poor time management.
It's that the developer's attention is constantly being pulled in different directions.
Every interruption means understanding a new issue, switching contexts, and eventually trying to return to the original task.
That makes it difficult to estimate how much time they actually have for their own assignments.
And because they're known for being dependable, the requests keep coming.
3. How one overloaded developer can hold up an entire sprint
The biggest concern isn't always how much work one developer has.
It's how their workload affects everyone else.
Imagine a feature moving through a typical development workflow:
- A developer completes the implementation.
- A senior developer reviews the pull request.
- QA tests the changes.
Now imagine that the senior developer responsible for reviewing the code is already overloaded.
- The implementation is finished, but the pull request sits untouched.
- QA can't begin testing. The feature can't move to the next stage, and the original developer may have to wait before making further progress.
- One delayed review has now affected multiple people.
This is an example of a dependency bottleneck.
As explains in its discussions of dependencies, work can become delayed when progress relies on particular people, skills, or teams.
The same situation can happen when one developer is responsible for several critical activities.
One delayed review might affect a single task. Several delayed reviews can put an entire sprint under pressure.
4. Context switching is costing developers more time than teams realize.
Developers need uninterrupted time to work through technical problems.
Writing code, debugging an issue or understanding an existing implementation often requires sustained concentration.
But when someone becomes the team's default problem-solver, their day can turn into a continuous stream of interruptions.
A teammate asks for help. A pull request needs reviewing. QA reports a bug. A manager requests a progress update.
Each interruption might take only a few minutes.
The problem is that returning to a complex task isn't always immediate.
The developer has to remember what they were working on, understand where they stopped, and rebuild the context needed to continue.
This creates a productivity issue that isn't always visible on a sprint board.
A task might remain marked as "In Progress," even though the developer has spent most of the day responding to requests from other people.
That's why workload shouldn't be measured only by the number of tickets assigned to someone.
It should also include the time they spend reviewing, debugging, mentoring, and supporting the rest of the team.
5. Why engineering managers sometimes notice the problem too late
In many teams, workload issues only become obvious when delivery starts slipping.
A sprint review reveals unfinished assignments. Several pull requests are still waiting for approval. QA reports that important fixes haven't reached testing.
By then, the team is already dealing with the consequences.
There are a few reasons why this happens.
Task completion gets more attention than dependencies
A dashboard might show that most assignments are progressing.
However, it might not immediately highlight that several activities are waiting for the same developer.
The team sees activity, but not necessarily the dependency causing the delay.
Priorities change during the sprint
An urgent bug, production issue, or unexpected client request can introduce additional work.
The original sprint plan may no longer represent what the team is actually handling.
Support work often goes unrecorded
Code reviews, mentoring, debugging, and technical discussions all take time.
Yet these responsibilities aren't always represented as separate assignments.
As a result, a developer can appear to have enough capacity on paper while being fully occupied in reality.
Workload is reviewed individually
Managers sometimes look at how many tasks each person owns without considering how their work connects to the rest of the team.
This can create a misleading impression that responsibilities are evenly distributed.
6. How to spot workload imbalance before it affects delivery
The answer isn't to immediately move tasks around whenever someone appears busy.
Managers first need to understand how work is distributed and where progress is getting stuck.
Here are five practical ways to approach this.
1. Look beyond assigned task counts
Two developers might have five assignments each, but the effort required to complete those assignments could be entirely different.
Consider complexity, estimated effort, and additional responsibilities before deciding whether the workload is balanced.
Task counts are useful, but they shouldn't be the only measure of capacity.
2. Keep an eye on work in progress
When developers are handling too many activities simultaneously, maintaining focus becomes difficult.
Teams should regularly review how much work is currently in progress and whether some existing tasks can be completed before new ones are introduced.
Limiting work in progress can help reduce unnecessary context switching and make bottlenecks easier to identify.
3. Find out which tasks depend on specific people
Ask a few straightforward questions:
- How many tasks are waiting for the same reviewer?
- Which activities can only be completed by one developer?
- Is one person responsible for too many important technical decisions?
- Could another team member take over some of these responsibilities?
These questions help uncover knowledge and skill dependencies before they start affecting delivery.
4. Include support responsibilities in sprint planning
Code reviews, debugging, mentoring, and production support shouldn't be treated as invisible work.
If a developer spends a significant part of their week helping others, that responsibility needs to be considered when planning their sprint capacity.
Otherwise, managers risk assigning work based on time that the developer doesn't actually have.
5. Review project health throughout the sprint
Don't wait until the sprint ends to understand whether things are going off track.
Regularly review overdue tasks, approaching deadlines, unresolved bugs, blocked activities and workload distribution.
The sooner a potential problem becomes visible, the more time the team has to address it.
7. Can AI help engineering managers recognize workload problems?
This is where AI-powered project management becomes interesting.
Traditional project management tools help teams organize assignments, set deadlines, and track progress.
AI adds another possibility: helping managers make better sense of the information already available across their projects.
For example, an AI assistant can support activities such as:
- Workload checks: Help identify potential imbalances in how responsibilities are distributed across team members.
- Risk checks: Review available project information and highlight areas that might require attention.
- Project health analysis: Help managers understand whether projects are progressing as expected.
- Outcome predictions: Use available project information to estimate potential outcomes and highlight possible concerns.
- Task planning: Help break down larger assignments and organize priorities.
Of course, these insights depend on the quality of the underlying information.
If code reviews, support responsibilities, or task statuses aren't recorded, an AI assistant may not have enough context to understand the complete workload.
AI should support engineering decisions, not replace the experience and judgement of engineering managers.
8. Where do ProjTL and Atlas fit into this workflow?
At ProjTL, we're bringing project management and AI together through Atlas, an AI assistant designed to support everyday project workflows.
Some of its capabilities are particularly relevant to sprint planning and workload management.
- Workload Check: Helps teams understand how work is distributed.
- Risk Check: Supports the identification of potential project risks.
- Project Health: Helps teams assess how their projects are progressing.
- Outcome Predictions: Uses available project information to help predict potential project outcomes.
- Task and Deadline Management: Atlas can create deadlines and help users manage tasks.
Atlas also includes skills for daily planning, weekly planning, prioritization, status updates, meeting action items, and decision-making.
Its WhatsApp integration gives users another way to interact with project information. Users can add, assign, and check tasks, as well as coordinate with clients and teammates.
This means team members don't always have to navigate through different application screens just to access routine project information.
The idea isn't to replace sprint planning or the technical judgement of experienced developers.
It's to make workload, project progress, and potential risks easier to understand.
9. Your best developer shouldn't become your biggest project risk
Every engineering team needs experienced developers who can handle difficult assignments and help others when things go wrong.
But when the same person becomes responsible for every complicated task, critical review, and technical decision, the team's workflow becomes fragile.
Too much depends on one person's availability.
The solution isn't to stop trusting experienced developers with important work. It's to distribute responsibilities more thoughtfully, recognize the work that often goes unnoticed, reduce unnecessary interruptions, and help knowledge spread across the team.
A healthy sprint isn't necessarily one where everyone has the same number of tasks.
It's one where people can move their work forward without constantly waiting for the same person.
Because when one developer becomes responsible for keeping everything moving, the team isn't working at full capacity. It's working around a bottleneck.
