Burnout is a risk when a team is asked to carry more work than it can comfortably handle for too long. Daily execution and business support can make that limit easy to miss. Treat signs of exhaustion as a capacity question, not a reason to assume the team can simply keep pushing. section 4.2.1
Check for patterns rather than relying on a single missed deadline or unused day off:
- Project or sprint deadlines are missed more often than met. In retrospectives, check whether people were repeatedly pulled away from planned work. section 4.2.1
- People are not using their paid time off. They may feel unable to step away because there is too much to do. section 4.2.1
- A key person’s time off creates heightened stress for the rest of the team. section 4.2.1
A capacity warning
Suppose sprint work repeatedly slips because the same people are pulled into business support. The retrospective gives a more useful signal than the missed date alone: planned work cannot stay staffed. Reassess the team’s capacity and get help before exhaustion leads people to leave. section 4.2.1 section 4.5
Help need not always mean a full-time hire. Contractors or third-party vendors can augment a team at different times, with different strengths and weaknesses. The immediate decision is whether the current team has enough support to do its work and take time away. section 4.2.1 section 4.5
