Don’t Panic! Any Crisis Is Solvable!
Five Steps Scrum teams could take to overcome crises.
Five Steps Scrum teams could take to overcome crises.
It was a quiet Wednesday morning, a week before the launch date. Everything seemed under control until stakeholders realized a critical feature derailed; they were furious and started mistrusting the product team. After months of work, how could the Scrum team end up in such a stressful situation? The stakes were high; there was no room for failure. They had to turn this ship around and meet the launch date.
The Product Owner was the only team member in the critical meeting, and he had urgently to figure out with the team what to do. Stakeholders were mad and believed everyone was lying to them. Yet, the launch date was just a week ahead of them. No excuses would be accepted; the Scrum team had to make it happen.
No matter how good you are, you will end up in a crisis. In a complex world, unpleasant surprises will come your way. The question isn’t how can you avoid them, but how can you deal with them? I know you can become risk-averse and try preventing potential issues, but unforeseen things will hit you when you don’t expect them, and then you need to deal with that anyway.
“In a crisis, don’t hide behind anything or anybody. They’re going to find you anyway.” Bear Bryant
I’ve stumbled upon several crises in my life; some hurt me because I didn’t know how to deal with them, and then after learning some key steps, I could deal smoothly with the crises. During this piece, I will walk you through the steps I take to overcome the inevitable crises we face.
1 — Don’t Take it Personal
During a critical situation, people will have strong emotions. They may be pissed off, nervous, furious, or anything around these feelings. Inevitably, personal attacks will come in your direction. Some people will point fingers, others will judge, or whatever else might be. None of this will help solve the situation, and if you take it personally, it will get even worse.
No matter how strong the personal attacks are, you cannot let that drive you. That is critical learning I had. You need to move from personal attacks to the problem itself to solve the crisis. I know it’s hard to avoid a direct conflict when someone looks at you and says, “Your work sucks! You made a mess out of it” But if you want to come out of the crisis, responding to an insult with another isn’t going to support you anyhow.
My typical answer to insults in a crisis is empathy. I label what I feel. For example, “I feel your frustration, and I am sorry for that. This situation also frustrates me, but I am sure we can deal with it.” Generally, this helps me come back to a scenario we can collaborate. And this will allow me to jump to the second step.
2 — De-escalate
In a crisis, people tend to amplify the size of the problem. The more they panic, the more drama they make. And again, this isn’t useful to get the problem solved. That’s why you should put energy into de-escalating the situation.
In the role of a Product Owner, a vital skill is to remain calm in all situations. Step back from whatever is happening and try having a third-person perspective. In the example I started this post, stakeholders escalated the problem by believing the integration was broken and unfixable. They assumed a manual process was the only feasible solution on the table. Fear dominated their minds, and the problem got bigger than its actual size.
To de-escalate the problem, you need to show confidence. If you are insecure, stakeholders will use that to maximize the problem. In the situation I mentioned, I jumped and said, “I am confident we can get the integration fixed and clean up the data mess. Please, let me align with the team and come back with a strategy.” The stakeholders were still skeptical, but they said, “you’ve got until midday to come back with a plan.” I got all I needed to figure out how to address the problem with the team.
De-escalating the problem allows you to work on a solution. Without that, people won’t give you space to work.
3 — Set Directions
Scrum teams have no heroes, everyone is equal, and we should always win or lose together. That’s why Product Owners should strive for collaboration with the team and figure out how to overcome the challenge. Don’t try being a hero; that will most probably ensure failure.
One crucial aspect is how you communicate the situation with your team. You neither need to bring drama nor stress to the team. A great Product Owner will explain the problem clearly, its impact, and constraints. Together, the Scrum team will figure out how to move forward.
For me, a simple way of communicating would be like this, “A key feature stopped working, and this is a go-live blocker. We need to figure out how to put it back to work and fix the side effects. The time isn’t in our favor as we will launch this product in a week, but I trust we can find a way out together.” Note that I didn’t mention the anger the stakeholders showed nor the pressure they put, but I made it clear it’s a blocker for our goal, and we need to fix it.
To solve a crisis, the team needs direction, not pressure.
4 — Create a Plan
In theory, Scrum teams are self-managing teams and should be able to figure out on their own how to overcome a crisis. However, not all teams are at the same level; they may need guidance. Still, I don’t think a Product Owner should dictate how the team should function, but she should ask the questions that will help the team come up with clear directions. Here is what I ask during a critical situation:
What do we need to do to overcome this problem?
Who can work on it?
How can I help with this situation?
Is there anything distracting us from focusing?
Generally, these questions help Scrum teams uncover what they need to act on the problem. I asked these questions with the situation I mentioned earlier in this post, and here is what I got:
Dev: “We need several things. First, I need some examples of what failed, and then I can analyze them and find a fix. Second, someone will need to go through the whole data and identify what’s duplicated, missing, and what needs to be removed in comparison with the original data source.”
Product Owner: “I can share the examples, and I also can go through the data, but I need help as it’s gigantic.”
Another Dev: “If you agree we will miss the Sprint Goal, I can help you with the data analysis and clean up.”
Product Owner: “I don’t want the Sprint Goal to get in our way of solving this critical issue. We can stop what we are doing now, and once we fix the issues, we can decide what we do with our Sprint.”
After this exchange, we identified the first steps, and everyone knew what to do. We didn’t need more than that.
5 — Focus
When you land in a crisis, you must focus on solving the issues you face. You need to drop whatever else you have on your plate. Coming back to the example I shared, some of our team members had to finish other essential activities for the product launch. However, they weren’t blockers for our plans; we agreed on stopping everything and putting our attention on fixing our issues. I cleaned my schedule and did everything I could to support the team. At that moment, only one thing mattered: getting our integration back to work and cleaning up the data.
With clarity on what to do as well as what not to do. Every team member could help overcome our challenge. Our communication was straight, for example, “I found this, who can pick it up?”, and someone would reply, “On it.” another developer would say, “I’ve got the fix, need a review.”, and soon a message would pop up, “Doing it now.” Our communication was directly on point.
Collaboration and focus enable teams to overcome any challenge life presents them. In a crisis, we need to react fast. Everyone must be on the same boat and be accountable for the situation.
Endnote
No matter how good you are, crises will eventually hit you. And that’s fine; you don’t need to avoid them. I see a choice between maximizing opportunities and avoiding risks. I prefer the first option because it triggers the imagination of what we could achieve instead of what we need to avoid.
One tricky aspect about us as human beings, avoiding loss is 10x more important for us than achieving success. We are afraid of failure. Yet, without taking risks, we have little chance of outstanding.
My lesson, no matter how critical a crisis is, there’s always a way out as long as you believe it.
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