A few years ago, we were constantly fire-fighting.

The more requests we solved, the more requests we got. It somehow never seemed to end. We could never focus on solving problems proactively.

And then my manager said to me: "You know, the more things you touch, the more you destabilize the system, and the more you create work for yourself."

Yes, that request came as a result of us fixing that other thing, without fully understanding the context. Yes, that other request forced team A to adopt a breaking change, but they need to adopt this other urgent fix because production is broken. Yes, that outage somehow happened because of unforeseen interactions between legacy systems and the fix we deployed.

The Efficiency Paradox

The more efficient we make something, the more we use it.

When the goal becomes to solve as many requests and as quickly as possible–––and you are successful at that, you build a reputation of efficient problem-solvers. People will naturally think of you when they face their next problem. It's not a terrible thing in itself—unless the team is already overwhelmed.

What's more, you might introduce lots of quick fixes instead of solving problems more thoroughly and sustainably. The tech debt increases. The situation worsens.

Platform teams must take another, less reactive approach to provide better support.

Not All Requests Are Created Equal

Fire-fighting often stems from a lack of clear priorities.

When you're overwhelmed, stressed out and in a reactive mindset, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. And so you just tackle the next problem hoping the game of whack-a-mole will end. To break the cycle, define what exactly the team should focus on at the moment.

Establishing that priority helps to focus the assessment of requests through qualifying questions:

1. Nice-to-have or blocker: How urgent is the request?

2. Alignment: How on-topic is the request with respect to what the team/company decided was a priority?

3. Opportunity cost: How does the value of solving that request compare to what you're currently doing?

Make it okay to defer solving these issues at a later date: "Thanks for the report, we converted it to a Jira ticket and we will prioritize it next sprint." That means one person on the team can triage requests and the rest can focus on more impactful projects.

We still get weeks that are more intense than others, of course. And some people like the thrill of being everywhere at once. But understanding that paradox and necessity to have one guiding priority really helps to regain control when it slips away momentarily.