---
title: "First Steps during chaos: articles"
url: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/First%2BSteps%2Bduring%2Bchaos.md"
canonical: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/First+Steps+during+chaos"
tags: []
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "On leading a software team in survival mode, with first steps like owning your team, task boards, daily standups, code reviews and fewer bus factors."
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# First Steps during chaos: articles

On leading a software team in survival mode, with first steps like owning your team, task boards, daily standups, code reviews and fewer bus factors.

HTML: https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/First+Steps+during+chaos · 30 linked entries (each is plain Markdown) · Site index: [llms.txt](https://www.5whys.com/llms.txt)

- [Team Bus Factors: How to Reduce Them and How to Prevent Them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/team-bus-factors-how-to-reduce-them-and-how-to-prevent-them.md) (2015-10-16): A book chapter on team bus factors: why single experts are a risk and a bottleneck, and how pairing, rotation and apprentices remove them.
- [A Value System for Code Reviews, and How to Scale Them for a Large Project](https://www.5whys.com/articles/a-value-system-for-code-reviews-and-how-to-scale-them-for-a.md) (2014-09-18): How one company replaced slow, tool-based architect code reviews with quick in-person reviews and a learning third reviewer so the process could scale.
- [Signs you might be in survival mode](https://www.5whys.com/articles/signs-you-might-be-in-survival-mode.md) (2014-03-27): A list of early warning signs that a software team is in survival mode, such as constant urgency, missing context, no time to reduce risk and long stress.
- [Definition: Survival Mode](https://www.5whys.com/articles/definition-survival-mode.md) (2013-10-20): A short definition of survival mode, the spiral of fighting fires with no time to learn, and how removing over commitments helps break it.
- [Elastic Leadership in Devops Survival Mode](https://www.5whys.com/articles/elastic-leadership-in-devops-survival-mode.md) (2013-02-24): A look at a DevOps Guys post in which command and control ended production fires and freed time to learn, read as Elastic Leadership in survival mode.
- [Team Leader Manifesto - Take #4](https://www.5whys.com/articles/team-leader-manifesto-take-4.md) (2012-06-06): Roy Osherove's Team Leader Manifesto in full: great teams are grown, not hired, by continuously growing people's skills to the point of self-organization.
- [Team Leader Manifesto - Take #3](https://www.5whys.com/articles/team-leader-manifesto-take-3.md) (2012-06-06): The third draft of the team leader manifesto, which defines a leader's success as the team's growth in self-organization and adds slack time to learn.
- [On time, with quality - why is this mostly failing?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/on-time-with-quality-why-is-this-mostly-failing.md) (2012-05-06): Why teams fail to ship on time with quality while stuck in chaos, and why team leaders must remove commitments to make time to learn and practice.
- [Middle Management or puppet management?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/middle-management-or-puppet-management.md) (2012-05-06): Why many team leaders act as puppets for upper management, and why a team leader's real job is to make their own decisions and grow the team.
- [What should a good code review look and feel like?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-should-a-good-code-review-look-and-feel-like.md) (2012-05-02): How a good code review should feel: short, in person, side by side, done by everyone on the team, and aimed at learning rather than tool comments.
- [Do new startup leaders need to grow their teams?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/do-new-startup-leaders-need-to-grow-their-teams.md) (2012-05-01): Why early-stage startups are usually in survival mode with no time to grow people or use TDD, and why learning should start once the direction is proven.
- [The Chaos Addiction](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-chaos-addiction.md) (2011-08-07): How survival mode becomes a self-reinforcing addiction that cuts quality and learning time, and why a team leader must take a risk to break the cycle.
- [Video: How to manage a person who is always late to a standup meeting](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-how-to-manage-a-person-who-is-always-late-to-a-standup.md) (2011-07-30): A YouTube video answering how to handle a team member who is always late to the daily standup, with a different approach for each team maturity stage.
- [Video: Mistake #1 - Not Understanding Team Maturity](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-mistake-1-not-understanding-team-maturity.md) (2011-07-28): A short video on the first of ten team leader mistakes, failing to recognize the team's maturity stage, plus a note on an Oslo team leader class.
- [Video: Ten Mistakes Software Team Leaders Make](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-ten-mistakes-software-team-leaders-make.md) (2011-07-20): Video and slides of a SkillsMatter talk on ten mistakes software team leaders make, from ignoring team maturity to fear of delegation and placating.
- [The Fear Of Failure And What To Do About It](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-fear-of-failure-and-what-to-do-about-it.md) (2011-06-30): Using a Milton Glaser video on the fear of failure, a look at why team leaders must take personal risks and how timed experiments can lower them.
- [What to do if some people in the team just don't want to take a task?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-to-do-if-some-people-in-the-team-just-dont-want-to-take.md) (2011-06-06): How a Scrum team leader should respond when team members won't pick tasks in sprint planning, with different tactics for each team maturity stage.
- [Video: Elastic Leadership in software - InfoQ interview](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-elastic-leadership-in-software-infoq-interview.md) (2011-04-15): A link to an InfoQ video interview from QCon London 2011 on Elastic Leadership, where the leader moves from dictator to coach as the team matures.
- [12 Behavior Anti Patterns You Will Face As a Software Team Leader](https://www.5whys.com/articles/12-behavior-anti-patterns-you-will-face-as-a-software-team-l.md) (2011-04-11): Twelve team member behavior anti-patterns and three outside disruptions a software team leader faces in survival mode, with how to respond to each one.
- [Slides: Team Leadership In the Age of Agile](https://www.5whys.com/articles/slides-team-leadership-in-the-age-of-agile.md) (2011-03-19): Slides from a QCon London 2011 talk on the three maturity stages of a software team and how a team leader adjusts leadership style to each one.
- [Video – Code Leaders and Beautiful Teams](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-ndash-code-leaders-and-beautiful-teams.md) (2010-05-24): A post about a QCon London 2010 talk on code leaders and beautiful teams, focused on the chaotic first stage, with a link to the InfoQ recording.
- [The 3 maturity stages of a software team and how scrum fails to identify them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-3-maturity-stages-of-a-software-team-and-how-scrum-fails.md) (2010-05-17): The chaotic, mid-life and mature stages of a software team, the leadership each one needs, from dictator to coach, and why Scrum Masters miss them.
- [Do Not Fear Confrontation](https://www.5whys.com/articles/do-not-fear-confrontation.md) (2009-10-24): A short video in which Roy Osherove urges software team leads not to be afraid of confrontation, with a link to watch it on YouTube.
- [A simple way to know you're missing some leadership skills](https://www.5whys.com/articles/a-simple-way-to-know-youre-missing-some-leadership-skills.md) (2009-10-15): Why a team lead who can't get the team to follow even simple practices is likely missing people and leadership skills, not technical knowledge.
- [Spend at least 50% of your time with your team](https://www.5whys.com/articles/spend-at-least-50-of-your-time-with-your-team.md) (2009-09-10): Why a team lead should block 50% of each day as team time, and how to use the Five Whys and assertiveness to cut down on meetings that add no value.
- [Step #4 - Start doing code reviews – Seriously](https://www.5whys.com/articles/step-4-start-doing-code-reviews-seriously.md) (2009-09-08): A team leader's guide to serious code reviews: what to look for, reviewing every check-in yourself at first, then training the team to review its own code.
- [Daily Standup Meetings - Introduction and 5 useful tips](https://www.5whys.com/articles/daily-standup-meetings-introduction-and-5-useful-tips.md) (2009-09-06): How to run a daily standup meeting with the three questions, why each question matters, and five hard-learned tips for keeping it under 15 minutes.
- [If you don’t own your team, Someone else will](https://www.5whys.com/articles/if-you-dont-own-your-team-someone-else-will.md) (2009-09-06): Why a software team leader must take ownership of the team's boundaries and shield it from outside interference before the team can become self-directing.
- [Step #2 – Use a big visible board with post it notes](https://www.5whys.com/articles/step-2-use-a-big-visible-board-with-post-it-notes.md) (2009-09-05): How a team lead can use a big visible whiteboard with sticky notes to track tasks, expose developers juggling several tasks, and show management the load.
- [Step #1 – Claim Your Territory, Own your team](https://www.5whys.com/articles/step-1-claim-your-territory-own-your-team.md) (2009-09-05): Why a dev lead must claim the team's territory: keep implementation decisions inside the team, be its single entry point, and ask why outsiders interfere.


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/