Can we prepare too much? A DevOps response.

Coming from a military background I often heard two seeming contradictory phrases nearly everyday; 'prior preparation and planning prevents piss poor performance' and 'no plan survives contact with the enemy' for the sake of modesty the former is known as the 5Ps.

Many an NCO has jibed at his newly minted officer as he has stumbled into yet another unseen metaphorical minefield and f***ked it up again; "5Ps sir" delivered with a sarcastic and superior tone.

Conversely, that same officer complete with freshly bruised ego would ensure that the next task they were given would be planned in meticulous detail; every course of action (COA) considered, and the task would start with a fresh confidence born from hours upon hours of asking "what if this happens" and "what if that happens", you get the idea.

Unfortunately, and as you are probably aware now, fate always has other ideas and has plenty of spanners to throw in the workings our our double line spaced, velum bound and wax sealed plans that we have agonized over and consumed enough caffeine to send a horse sprinting to produce.

No plan survives contact with the enemy. True. 

5Ps. Also true.

So how is this possible?

Having taken my experience in the military (and maybe the stories I mentioned are closer to home that I'm letting on) I see that these two opposing pieces of advice are equally as important and come as a package. You cannot succeed if you don't heed both in equal measure. You need balance.

To take an example from my current world of crisis management let's consider the occasional unfortunate need to Shelter in Place (SiP). I can plan until I'm high on caffeine and have reams and reams of contingency plans listing primary, secondary and tertiary SiP locations, I can plan where water and emergency supplies will be cached and of course it will all beautifully double lined spaced of course and will go to sleep knowing I have once again theoretical saved Amazon from impending doom; but this is not so. 

It is more likely that I have wasted much of my time because:

1. Plans scarcely be seen by those that need to see them.

2. Who reaches for the hefty stack of paper/ring binder or jumps on SharePoint as their immediate action when the sh*t hits the fan?

3. Fate has other ideas!

I don't believe in the traditional idea of fate being a predestination but I do believe fate is wicked and cruel and the one thing you forgot to consider or dismissed as less likely than winning the lottery is the hand she'll deal you on the day.

So why bother? When planning do I try and think of all scenarios and combinations of scenarios? It's just not possible; there are 10,000 combinations to a 4 digit code, if we experience compounded incidents you can see how many possible variations in the plan I need to have considered and resourced.

I'll ask again; so why bother? I don't.  What I believe to be more effective, agile and efficient is a series of modular response "blocks" that you build a response from. These blocks could include notification, emergency supplies, approved media statements, etc; the list goes on. After all, I neither want the NCO to mutter "5Ps" under his breath at me and equally I don't want to have wasted every waking minute writing plans that don't fit the unique events I'm faced with.

What is key to implementing this is education and training. This gives the crisis leader the confidence to take the block and tweak and adjust so if perfectly fits the situation at hand but without having the burden of coming up with a fresh plan each time; 5Ps after all.

So why do I write this lengthy post? I see too much prescriptive planning methodology out there and want to shout "AGILITY" from the rooftops. We (I) work in a tech organization with DevOps at its core. Why? Because it works. It's agile, efficient and proven to be effective thus CMOps is born. It's transparent, it's fast moving and it focuses on the real issues and doesn't allow for distraction. Is that not also what we want during a crisis? I sure do.

Blocks become metaphorical (or actual) post-it notes the Ops board becomes a Kanban board and our immediate goals are contained within a sprint. 

Don't forget,you heard it here first (I think?)