Thanks for writing this excellent piece. As a product manager, I relate a lot to the persona for "the developer reliant on the hero to save the day." Being reliant on heroes is a common position for a product manager to be in.
Beekey, what can the work prioritizer (product manager, business analyst, scrum master, etc.) do to enable multiple crisis-solvers on the team? Say Bob is our hero and Julia is our mid-level dev. Should we just have Bob and Julia tag-team the crises, or should we attempt to give some of Bob's normal non-emergency work to Julia, too?
Beekey Cheung is a software engineer with a large amount of enthusiasm for economics and a passion for education. He loves mentoring other programmers and is currently building an application to te...
Definitely have them pair in the crisis. That's the best way to learn.
Also make sure to do post mortems of every crisis. Talk to Bob about letting Julia provide suggestions for improvement instead of speaking right away. That'll help Julia learn as well. Create action points, and possibly stories, for crisis prevention. Treat doing at least one of those tasks as important as handling the crisis itself. This will reduce the need for crisis management.
Let me know if there are more specific situations you'd like to discuss.
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Thanks for writing this excellent piece. As a product manager, I relate a lot to the persona for "the developer reliant on the hero to save the day." Being reliant on heroes is a common position for a product manager to be in.
Beekey, what can the work prioritizer (product manager, business analyst, scrum master, etc.) do to enable multiple crisis-solvers on the team? Say Bob is our hero and Julia is our mid-level dev. Should we just have Bob and Julia tag-team the crises, or should we attempt to give some of Bob's normal non-emergency work to Julia, too?
Definitely have them pair in the crisis. That's the best way to learn.
Also make sure to do post mortems of every crisis. Talk to Bob about letting Julia provide suggestions for improvement instead of speaking right away. That'll help Julia learn as well. Create action points, and possibly stories, for crisis prevention. Treat doing at least one of those tasks as important as handling the crisis itself. This will reduce the need for crisis management.
Let me know if there are more specific situations you'd like to discuss.