The 4 States of a Team
I have recently started reading An Elegant Puzzle Systems of Engineering Management (by Will Larson), at the recommendation of a colleague.
The book’s first chapter starts with a framework for describing teams and their performance, illustrating that teams are slotted into a continuum of four states.
I love the systematic way the book explains these states and I was even more happy that the solution for everything wasn’t: “Let’s add more people.”
If you are a manager and have dealt at least one time in your professional career with an important project or with a harsh deadline, you probably felt it on your skin. The common reaction at the management level, when it comes to high-stakes projects or something falling behind is to …add more people.
But does really adding more people make things go faster?
Being a Lead Engineer, leading projects and teams, I am happy to read and validate my beliefs: that these 4 states are strongly related to the technical debt the teams are handling, their time and power for innovation, and yes…the capacity (number of people).
According to Will Larson’s book, any team will find itself in one of these 4 states (and 4 strategic solutions to offer support for transitioning to the next state):
- FALLING BEHIND
When: the team’s backlog is longer than it was the week before, even though people are working extremely hard, but not making progress
Solution: Yes, add more people, until the team moves into treading water.
One important thing that is highlighted here is that people should not be moved around as “resources”, reassigning existing individuals to drive optimality, but hiring new people and increasing the overall capacity of the company.
2. TREADING WATER
When: the team is able to get the critical work done but is not able to start paying down technical debt or begin major new projects
Solution: LIMIT WIP (a.k.a work in progress)
Consolidate their efforts to finish more things and reduce concurrent work until they are able to begin repaying debt. The scope is to help people transition from a personal view of productivity to a team view.
3. REPAYING DEBT
When: they are able to start paying down technical debt and they are beginning to benefit from the debt-repayment snowball
Solution: Add time
Everything is already working, and the team needs the space to allow the compounding value of paying down technical debt to grow; balance new stuff with repaying the debt
4. INNOVATING
When: the technical debt is sustainably low and the team morale is high
Solution: Add slack
Even though the team reached the end of the continuum, there is still something to do: maintain enough slack in the team’s schedule so that the team can build quality into their work, innovate, and avoid backtracking; Tactically, ensure that your team’s work is valued.
As the book says, these fixes are slow. But as slow as it is, as durable the effect.
