Alternation is natural. Oceans forms tides and waves. Animals breathe and sleep. Aspen trees shed leaves despite the availability of winter sunlight.
Working in tech is a constant battle against people and processes that deny nature. Companies are collections of humans held together by organization and systems, the same way that organisms are coordinated cells.
A system is not guaranteed to be healthy for its members. Biology demonstrates a variety of mortal sacrifices that stabilize the ecosystem. Biologically inspired systems are easy to misappropriate in the name of a “greater good.”
The crime is to apply process with no natural foundation. While processes can be unnatural, those processes still have natural consequences. Stress is the body’s response to lapses in alternation. This is why overworking leads to caustic behavior and poor sleep.
Because companies are groups of people the consequences of unnatural process will impact the people. Stress to an organization is stress to its members. This stress can be moved between members by passing it down the chain. The sad failure of this habit is that the leaders who can change the process and relieve the stress have no motivation to do so because the consequences are redirected. This is known as being “out of touch” for the ignorant and sadistic for the rest.
Stress is experienced by humans as a chemical imbalance. This is the only way that the brain can signal a person to change. Continuing that imbalance by not correcting the cause is itself an unnatural process. When mental stress fails to motivate correction the next consequence is to physical health.
This detrimental chain is not guaranteed for every bad decision. But every instance of that chain begins with simple crimes of continuous process. This is why sprints exist in the Agile development methodology. Sprints introduce rhythm to the continuous process of development. But rhythm is primarily repetition, so sprints do not automatically create alternation. They only introduce the opportunity to alternate.
Alternation of features and epics are a naive way to expect relief. Feature building is one continuous form of work. To prevent stress the form of work must alternate between what must be done and what may be done. The solution is an alternation in the right to choose.
Feature development is driven by the decisions of product teams, but that is not the only way to add value to a product. Scalability and reliability facilitate growth so that features can be added with confidence. The ability to grow is more valuable than the resulting growth. This is why long-term profitability is more valuable than one good quarter.
Product and engineering teams must collaborate for the sake of business and sharing is the foundation of collaboration. The proximity between product and finance provides a tempting power that can be used to retain authority. Withholding the right to choose inevitably risks the health of others. Allowing harm to the other party in a codependent relationship is not collaborative. It is a preventable degradation of the relationship and a disservice to everyone involved.
