Viruses, Deadlines, and Emergencies
Nikola Bogdanov
Organizational Change, Transformation, and Business Agility Coach ??15+ yrs coached 280+ teams, 45+ companies in IT and diverse industries.??Speaker, Academic Lecturer, Podcasteer & Trainer.??Passionate about Agile.
Imagine. You are in a team doing Scrum for more than a year, having a skillful Scrum Master, who preaches all the values and principles from the Manifesto. The company claims how important “the Agile” is… a true Agile paradise. And one day, something happens – the Coronavirus makes the whole world stop and all the employees have to work remotely, a key deadline cannot be met, or the new big and important release is full of bugs!
The Sinking Ship
There’s this belief: If you are on a sinking ship or in a burning house, there’s no place for self-organization and the best approach is to get the most experienced person – the Captain or the Fireman, and let him get in charge. As a trained professional for such emergency cases, he is supposed to give the orders and concrete actions. Everyone must follow. So, we make the analogy…
Afterward, a war-group (a bunch of managers) comes. They give heavy speeches about the importance of the situation, proclaiming that now is the time for everyone to push hard!
“Yes, we are Agile, we have Scrum, but now we have an emergency, let’s leave this Agile stuff for calmer times.”, they say.
Finally, let the Micromanagement Hell begin! Huge push for delivery. People are asked to work overtime. “War group meetings” every 3 hours are held.
The result – the deadlines are still not met and many compromises are made. Nothing different from initially obvious was delivered but with lots of bugs on top. A huge pile of new technical dept is generated. Finally, now we have a lot of unhappy, disappointed, leaving the company people. No one believes anymore in empty words about values and principles.
Full Article in my Blog: https://www.agilepool.com/dealing-with-extreme/
Startup Psychologist | Supporting Startups, Founders & Tech Professionals | Clinical & Industrial Psychology | 3X Startup CMO | HBR Contributor | Psychotherapist
5 年Our reactions in stressful situations does become “survival-oriented”. It’s in our genes to stick to what we already know. We can develop our skill to “fight”, as opposed to “flight” (run back to the old tactics) or “freeze” (focus on secondary issues) - the 3 types of reaction to stress. The way defense forces cope with uncertainty and extreme conditions is constant practice. “Sure” you might say “when this is over we’ll practice”. I say practice now: take 10 minutes to run scenarios in your mind, talk about further catastrophic events that might hurt your business, share you anxieties at management meetings. True, once we get accustomed to the present situation we’ll all perform better. But for growth companies that might just be a little too late.