The Parable of the Ten Virgins tells the story of ten bridesmaids who await a bridegroom. They each took a lamp, and five of them took oil for the lamp while the other five did not.
They didn’t know when the bridegroom would arrive, and they all slept while waiting for him. When they heard the announcement that the bridegroom was coming, the five without oil end up going to buy some and missing the bridegroom.
Look, don’t look to me as the official interpreter of scripture. I’m just sharing a thought this sparked in my head because I think about this stuff a lot.
The five with oil had some reserve capacity, whereas the five without oil didn’t have any reserve capacity. When they get the new information of the bridegroom’s arrival, the second group wasn’t able to act on that new information.
Software development teams tend to not have oil, but maybe we could say it represents time held in reserve. If your teams are scheduled to 100%, then they have nothing in reserve for when new information comes along.
That new information could be noticing errors that need correction or finally discovering which features your customers really want.
If you want to be able to act on that, you need to have something in reserve.
