Fallout counter

[abitrolly]

Having web app for people to record and share where their cognitive Action Points are spent would help many stubborn devs and (maybe even more important) unaware managers to get what Development eXperience is all about, and how much money and/or potential contributors are they potentially losing every day.

In the Fallout screen above (taken from this guide) the player character has 10 AP until next turn. In development world each turn is a day, and I would say that 7 AP is the most for most people to handle. Unless there is a SOP (standard operating procedure) that you can follow mindlessly. Realistically I would say 4 AP is the limit per task after which people may start to feel tired.

Unlike physical activity, when a person is exhausted mentally, in can be draining and non-recoverable. The task that takes too much AP will deplete them over and over even without taking actual steps and just thinking about them. I observed that on people learning programming and I observe that on myself when I take more than I can chew.

After AP reserve is over, the person falls out. The good design on cognitive load is reduce AP per action (for everybody) and extend AP limit (for specific person). Making things simpler and automating things both can help. Fallout AP can be used as real metric. Not sure like KPI/OKR metric, but probably a metric on its own.