The most common mental model of work is that it’s like a 100-meter race (not even a 100-meter relay race, just a race)—as if a team is a single runner and can just pick up the pace, improve their conditioning, or improve their technique. Comparing work to a race and your teams to independent athletes obscures the complexity of work and leads to

“Upon reflection, this seems absurd, but remarkably few people in our field have devoted serious energy to understanding how these things called people affect software development.”