If a team identifies a process, feature, or subsystem as “slow”, it risks resisting change by mythology alone.
Slowness seems to make a special contribution to this picture in our heads. Time is especially valuable. So as we learn that a task is slow, an especial cost accrues to it. Whenever we think of doing the task again, we see how expensive it is, and bail.
– James Somers, Speed Matters: Why Working Quickly Is More Important Than It Seems
Today’s “this took longer than I’d hoped” can become tomorrow’s “here be dragons” or “we need to do days and weeks of planning and estimating before we start in this part of the system”.
I’ve found cross-organizational conversations prevent ‘slowness mythologies’ from forming. Retrospectives and 1:1s let team members identify friction points. From there, I gather holistic feedback and pitch solutions to the team.
Engineering leadership is fundamentally social!