Today I invented a phrase (at least I think I invented it because I haven't heard anyone else say it): "Avoidable Heroism."
I invented it in response to a question, "Should my team work on the weekend to meet a commitment made under their control?"
Now, I don't know the background behind this question. Maybe it's perfectly reasonable for them to work on the weekend. Maybe they have no agreement about sustainable pace. And, it raises a few questions in my mind. How often does this happen? How far from the commitment are they? When was the first, best opportunity to re-negotiate the commitment? How did it slip by? What else is happening that affects their ability to commit and deliver?
Avoidable heroism happens on teams when the system pressures the team into committing to "stretch" iteration goals (rather than evidence-based goals) and someone (or more than one someone) has to work nights and weekends to meet the commitment.
Avoidable heroism occurs when unit test coverage goes down, team members focus on cranking out quantity of code rather than quality code and "forget" TDD, so that at a certain point a team member throws themselves on the technical debt grenade and begins to clear away the debris.
Avoidable heroism ensues when team members hand the new code to the testers on the last day of the iteration, rather than including them as part of the cross-functional teamwork from the first day.
And so on.
In the 1980's (yes, I know that was before many of you were born), Tina Turner sang an anthem, "We don't need another hero!". Make it your own, your team anthem.
N.B.: I hope someone out there who's into writing anti-patterns will collaborate with me on documenting this one.
Comments
Thanks, as always, for your thoughtful insights Diana.
I was going to give you some more detail on this situation, but instead was struck with an inspiring postulation that: anti-patterns never exist as singularities.
“Avoidable Heroism”, left unchecked, can be abused. Commitment with expectation of unlimited renegotiation is hardly commitment. “Expecting” others to compensate for our mistakes is a missed opportunity for the full value of the learning experience they bring.
So, what anti-pattern(s) exist that provide additional boundaries to behaviors around commitment and negotiation that allow trust to flourish?
I once heard a nice, supposedly true story from Alistair Cockburn:
One Monday a developer came to his manager and bragged about how he had worked all weekend to enable the team “make the sprint commitment”. The manager said something like “next time this happens, I want you to stay home at the weekend. I want you to feel the pain of knowing that on Monday you will have to tell the PO that you didn’t live up to your commitment. I hope that will help you learn to not overcommit.”
Marty,
I don’t care whether commitment with the possibility of unlimited renegotiation is still commitment. The question is what is effective.
And the fact is that working harder than is sustainable is in nobodys interest. Encouraging teams to “work harder” when they find out that something takes more effort than anticipated doesn’t help anybody.
Finding out as early as possible, and then being able to collaborate on changing the plan so that we can deliver the best value possible, in a sustainable way, that seems to make more sense to me.
Doctors, Lawyers, business men, accountants… even artists… and almost all professionals work extra time when the going gets tough to make commitments, its what makes you professional. Software Developers need to grow up and get professional and stop avoiding doing the hard work when required.
Stop whining and hiding behind nonsense like “Sustainable Pace” and “Avoidable Heroism” and get on with the work!
Thanks for your comment, Matt. I appreciate you for taking the time to read and think about this topic.
To clarify, in this post I’m not talking about those occasional instances of real, emergent crisis where any professional steps up to do what needs to be done. I refer to when “being a hero” (e.g., working late, working weekends, sacrificing life balance, etc.) becomes an accepted and regular work practice, rather than anticipating and preventing the need for heroism.