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Okay resilience engineering micro blogging time
If you watch @MarisaGrayson's @REdeployConf talk, my fav part is a slide about halfway through with four categories of tactics for managing overload. I remember them as
* Degrade
* Cancel
* Reschedule
* Recruit
#andybloga
If you watch @MarisaGrayson's @REdeployConf talk, my fav part is a slide about halfway through with four categories of tactics for managing overload. I remember them as
* Degrade
* Cancel
* Reschedule
* Recruit
#andybloga
All four categories of tactics for managing overload boil down in my head to "do less work right now".
"overload" basically means "too much work assigned to one person/actor/system".
Work can be a very flexible concept. I'm not gonna get too philosophical, i should be sleeping.
"overload" basically means "too much work assigned to one person/actor/system".
Work can be a very flexible concept. I'm not gonna get too philosophical, i should be sleeping.
Work can be any number of things:
* assemble a car
* ship some project
* feed yourself breakfast
* encourage team members to take PTO
* that funky earworm that's been stuck in my head for three days and I still can't place the name where the chorus goes "work, work"
* assemble a car
* ship some project
* feed yourself breakfast
* encourage team members to take PTO
* that funky earworm that's been stuck in my head for three days and I still can't place the name where the chorus goes "work, work"
(I struggle to derive specific tactics from the generalized buckets in the face of a particular problem but since Prof Grayson already named them, I can at least use them as groupers and to remind me of all the tools I've picked up over the years. Anyway...)
The four strategies of managing overload:
Reschedule: move work to later or earlier
Degrade: cut some corners, call it good, slap a stamp on it and ship it
Cancel: lol nevermind
Recruit: Help! (The Beatles, 1965)
Reschedule: move work to later or earlier
Degrade: cut some corners, call it good, slap a stamp on it and ship it
Cancel: lol nevermind
Recruit: Help! (The Beatles, 1965)
Cancel is a fun one. You got too much to do? you find some task on the list, you decide it isn't worth the effort, you print out that ticket, and you file it in the circular bin.
(note to self: does the canonical #BulletJournal key include a symbol for "cancelled"? Like not just "shifted to the future log" but "i am deciding not to bother". Is it just X?)
It's easy to cancel personal projects, when you're the only stakeholder. If you didn't promise anything to anybody else, you only have to grapple with your own neuroses to decide whether to cancel something.
(When I say "you" obviously I mean "me, andytuba, a neurotic")
(When I say "you" obviously I mean "me, andytuba, a neurotic")
Canceling work in a workplace takes a little more effort.
Writing down why it wasn't worth the effort, communicating that out to people who will be impacted (including the management chain up and sideways), maybe even answering mgt's questions and deciding to belay that cancel.
Writing down why it wasn't worth the effort, communicating that out to people who will be impacted (including the management chain up and sideways), maybe even answering mgt's questions and deciding to belay that cancel.
what's fun about "cancel" work is ... that's work too. You can apply all the same tactics to it, like preparing "plan b" early on, or giving regular status updates about how a project is gradually failing. You can even cancel all the comms work if you figure nobody cares.
Reschedule is often "ask for an extension on the deadline" or "shuffle projects around on the calendar". I love me a good Gantt chart for visualizing when projects actually build on and depend on each other, vs projects I can just throw on the schedule whenever somebody's free.
Reschedule can also be a message queue or a buffer.
"please file your request in the circular bin and we'll probably get a fulfillment back to you later"
Make people wait their turn to give you work. If you've got a callback system, nice.
"please file your request in the circular bin and we'll probably get a fulfillment back to you later"
Make people wait their turn to give you work. If you've got a callback system, nice.
It's a little subtle imo, but you can reschedule work *earlier* for a few reasons.
You need to complete some job at a particular time, like pulling the lasagna out of the oven at 7pm? Work back to putting it in at 6pm, and preheating at 5:45pm.
You need to complete some job at a particular time, like pulling the lasagna out of the oven at 7pm? Work back to putting it in at 6pm, and preheating at 5:45pm.
"Mise en place" is my favorite example of "reschedule work to earlier". You're gonna want all your knives, spices, produce washed, prepped, and left where you can grab them—before you get into crunch time. Ain't nobody got time to clear the counter when you're already hungry.
"I'm free right now" is a good reason to reschedule work earlier. The dishes need washing and putting away eventually. If I'm unoccupied while dinner cooks in the oven, may as well clear out the sink.
Obviously I've shifted back into my preferred metaphor of kitchen work. If you can't relate to working in a kitchen and you're not prevented by some external force like a disability, maybe go get some experience cooking. It'll do you good, and not just to learn French.
Degrade is sometimes asking "is it good enough to ship"?
Wait, did i say sometimes? I mean constantly. Basically just always be practicing imposter syndrome.
Wait, did i say sometimes? I mean constantly. Basically just always be practicing imposter syndrome.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Just do it.
MVP
These are all reminders to "degrade your work so you can ship a sufficient result in a timely manner and move on to the next job".
Just do it.
MVP
These are all reminders to "degrade your work so you can ship a sufficient result in a timely manner and move on to the next job".
Personalization is often something that gets degraded, because cookie cutters are cheap and customization is more work on top of that. Custom work doesn't cost more just for that profit margin.
Speaking of personalization: tailoring is rescheduled work.
A "one size fits all" clothing was shipped from the factory, which has streamlined producing many of the same thing.
Throw $15 at the tailor later and they can make that janky suit look real natty on you.
A "one size fits all" clothing was shipped from the factory, which has streamlined producing many of the same thing.
Throw $15 at the tailor later and they can make that janky suit look real natty on you.
This whole twitter thread is an exercise in "degrade" because I want to get these thoughts out there, and package them up neatly at some point ... but i care more about posting this drivel than editing it and setting up a publishing pipeline.
You can preemptively degrade work. Like a proof of concept / prototype is supposed to be real janky, you just wanna see if it works or show off a demo. UX mockups should probably be lo-fi squiggles for most of the project.
You can reactively degrade work too, like cutting corners to make the job cheaper and easier. Or if the icing falls off the cake but the rest of the cake is still tasty, heck it: put it on the plate and serve it. Maybe wipe the top smooth and hope nobody notices.
You might notice that when your favorite social media sites are getting slammed because of some unexpected news events, you'll start to see cracks in the varnish where the cosmetic details are failing but the core content pulls through. This is why I don't trust client side JS.
Recruiting is a strategy i like to flip on its head. Often that means "delegate" or "hire". You can recruit your manager, too! When you bring a problem you're stuck on to your boss, you're asking them to do the work of helping. This is what managers are here for.
If you recruit your manager, they can help by rescheduling work to later, by clarifying what's okay to degrade, to having the authority and connections to gracefully cancel a project, or to delegate.
Recruit your manager ... just to recruit more help. Even if you could normally delegate something out yourself, you might be paralyzed with too much work already. Give a shout and get someone to call in the the crew to dig you out.
Ideally you realize you're getting in over your head and call for help before you're drowning ... but sometimes you don't notice or don't act until it's too late to save yourself.
Keep an eye out and kick the tires. Avoiding burnout is why we bother with planner books and project estimation and debriefs and load testing. When we stress our systems until they start to degrade, we learn what we can pull off and what we should work on.
Repeated stress leads to strength when managed well. Weight lifting is an example: work hard, get sore, build muscle, be able to work harder. But if you go too far and tear a ligament? You might not be coming back to the field.
Since I've stayed up way too late on this braindump, closing thoughts:
Grease that engine.
Eat before you realize you're hangry.
Drink some water.
Get some sunshine.
Read a book.
Take a breath. Again.
Take a break.
Build "personal maintenance" self-care into your routines.
Grease that engine.
Eat before you realize you're hangry.
Drink some water.
Get some sunshine.
Read a book.
Take a breath. Again.
Take a break.
Build "personal maintenance" self-care into your routines.
If you're struggling, ask a friend, coach, teacher, manager, doctor, psych, therapist, family for at least a little help: "can I bounce ideas off of you to figure out what's worth doing right now?" Even just text them. Or find a helpful stranger, like at the Crisis Text Line.
