Two Tips to Tease Apart Sneaky Problems and Make Progress

This is the August 2024 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.

Problems. They're always there, just waiting to pop up and say, “Surprise! Gotcha!”

I don't mind new problems, but the sneaky problems, the ones that reappear after I thought I fixed them? I really dislike those. Sneaky problems prevent us from making progress. Worse, they often have several causes. We can't “just” solve sneaky problems. Instead, we need to tease apart the various causes to see what continues to create them.

Here's an example of a sneaky problem: too-long cycle time. (See Flow Metrics and Why They Matter to Teams and Managers for a detailed explanation of how a long cycle time affects the project and the organization.) Axel, a project manager, and Barbara, a leader on the portfolio team, asked me why they still had too-long cycle times.

The team made sure each person only worked on one item at a time. And the portfolio team only assigned teams to projects, not individuals.

Each person was on one and only one team and each team had only one project. So why was the cycle time too long?

Axel and Barbara had a sneaky problem.

Sneaky Problems Require Subtlety to Fix

Sneaky problems surprise everyone. You might even think you're playing “whack-a-mole.” That's where you “beat” the problem back in one place, but pops up in a different place. We can't use straightforward problem-solving techniques alone. For example, the 5 Whys is a useful approach for many problems where there are a limited number of causes of a specific problem. Any problem-solving technique that has steps tends to be linear, or straightforward thinking.

But sneaky problems often have interconnecting causes. That means we need to incorporate non-linear thinking—that subtlety—to identify enough causes and fix them.

Here are the two tips to start addressing these sneaky problems:

Start to think in systems, as opposed to linear cause and effect.
Consider one intervention as an experiment.

I'll start with thinking in systems.

Tip 1: Think in Systems

When I say “think in systems,” I mean to see all the possible causes that show me these effects. That's why I start with these two concrete questions:

What effects or signals do I see and feel?
What effects or signals do other people see and feel?

It doesn't matter yet which cause(s) lead to which effect(s). That might be important later, but the first step is to see if I need to gather other data to clarify the reality.

Sneaky problems often mean there are multiple signals (the problems we see). Those signals often have multiple causes which creates multiple effects. I might even want to draw a picture of the various causes and effects. (That's called a causal loop diagram.)

When I spoke with Axel, he said, “Our product leader is unable to say no to anyone at all. Our backlog and roadmaps are growing with no end in sight.”

Barbara said, “Our projects are taking much longer than we expected because the product leader wants to cram more and more features into each project. I'm ready to declare victory and end all these projects so we can make better choices.”

Sneaky Problems Often Require Visualization

This simplified causal loop diagram does explain team-based effects for longer cycle time. Increased cycle time leads to lower throughput which leads to increased aging and leads to higher WIP. All “bad” things if you want to release frequent value to your customers.

However, this diagram does not include all the possible contributing factors to “Increase in WIP.” In this case, we're missing the increase in arrival rate for new feature requests. While no one asked the teams to multitask, the product leaders were unable to say, “No” to additional feature requests. As a result, the arrival rate created an increase in WIP, which started the cycle all over again.

Now, it was time for Axel and Barbara to choose an experiment.

Tip 2: Consider One Intervention as an Experiment

While I would love to solve all the problems in one fell swoop, I know that does not normally happen. Instead, we can consider one intervention, gather some data, and then proceed with more experiments.

In this case, when anyone asks a team to do more in the same amount of time, something has to give. Here, Axel realized many older features stayed stuck in their current columns on the board. (That's an increase in aging.) Barbara noticed “stuck” projects in the project portfolio.

Axel said, “We will finish everything that's currently open on the board, starting with the work that is closest to done before we even discuss anything else.” As the project manager, he had the power to do that.

On the other hand, Barbara needed the rest of the portfolio team to agree to her proposal. She said, “Our projects are taking longer than we want. That's because we keep adding to them. Instead, I'd like to reset back to a couple of months ago and release everything we originally planned. As long as what we originally planned is still valuable. If it's not valuable, release what is valuable and rethink the project portfolio.”

The portfolio team agreed and gave all the teams one month to release what was still valuable.

Now, the organization had enough space and time to discuss the root causes: The primary one was the pressure the product leaders felt for many new and changed features in such a short time. (I'll address that in the next Pragmatic Manager.)

Sneaky Problems—Systemic Issues—Prevent Progress

If you think you've solved this problem, but it keeps popping up, you've got a sneaky problem that prevents enough progress. Most of the time, sneaky problems arise from systemic issues in the organization. The first tip is to see them and start teasing the causes apart. The second tip is to choose a place to intervene and see if and how that helps. That's how everyone can make progress.

In the next newsletter, I'll discuss what happened when Axel and Barbara asked the product leaders to start saying no.

This newsletter touches on topics in these books:

The Sneaky Problem Series:

This newsletter turned into a series. (Surprised me!)

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Pragmatic Manager: Vol 21, #8, ISSN: 2164-1196