When the wheels fall off

The hope is that when one institutes changes they eventually take hold and have a life of their own beyond the original sponsor. That is somewhat true here now. It's also somewhat not true. I recently took a vacation, then got very sick, so I was out of the office for several weeks. Within one week the team had abnormally terminated the sprint, but then limped it along. In two weeks they had changed sprint cycle lengths and seemingly descended into thrash development.

Then something surprising happened. By the third week they had reemerged with a workable (albeit clumsy) dev sprint cycle. We just did a retrospective and as it turns out they had managed a number of external pressures fairly well all on their own. Given how they were being pushed and their abilities to manage that push they picked a path which would not lead to immediate failure and might even be successful.

It goes to show - sometimes you have to step back and let things fall apart for them to find their own continuity.