Yeah, the 30 minute tasks would more frequently be quick if there was room for them.
You can have agile flexibility or you can have lists of tasks that you have attempted to minmax that people are tracked to finish. Not both. Flexibility costs significant down time, if you're not being given it then you're not being allowed to be flexible.
This is really a case of over-utilisation. If you want a 30 minute task to be reliably out of the door in a time that's even of the same order of magnitude, the team has to be operating at 80% utilisation or less which, if it's the usual story of The Backlog That Never Ends, happens approximately never.
Correct. If management told our team that our performance was based on getting 2-3 planned features out this quarter, and we've been minmaxed to fill our schedules, and there's a hiring freeze and one team member just left - then we have no room for some "30 minute" (which is much more than 30 minutes for us) request. Also, management has told us that our performance reviews are based on whether we got these 2-3 planned features done within a very aggressive schedule, not your "30 minute" request - so it is management who has said this is of minimal importance, not us.
You can have agile flexibility or you can have lists of tasks that you have attempted to minmax that people are tracked to finish. Not both. Flexibility costs significant down time, if you're not being given it then you're not being allowed to be flexible.