Switching Tax Calculator
Every item in flight is paid for twice: the person juggling it loses time reloading, and the rest of the team loses time to the questions and status-tracking it generates. Here’s what that quiet tax costs, both ways.
How many work items each person is juggling at once. One means undivided focus.
Research puts a full return to focus north of 20 minutes. 15 is deliberately conservative.
Salary + overhead ÷ ~2,080 hours. Leave blank to see time only.
How many times a day each juggled item pulls its owner back. One is conservative.
Questions, handoffs, and clarifications each in-flight item triggers to teammates. Each costs one reload. Set to 0 to count private switching only.
Extra standup, board-tending, and status-update time each in-flight item adds, per person.
What divided focus costs you
≈ 0.8 full-time engineers of capacity, gone to switching and coordination.
6 devs × (3 − 1) items → 180 min reload + 204 min coordination = 384 min/day
Based on and extending the switching-tax model in The 5X Effect, Chapter 4. A planning estimate, not a precise measurement.