Eight years ago, I wrote about my theory of restoring struggling teams,
which came down to four steps:

A team is falling behind if each week their backlog is longer than the week before.
Solve by hiring more.
A team is treading water if they’re able to get their critical work done, but are not able to start paying down technical debt or start major new projects.
Solve by reducing work-in-progress.
A team is repaying debt when they’re able to start paying down technical debt, but progress still feels slow.
Solve by staying the course: it’s actually working, you just have to keep the faith until you finish digging out.
A team is innovating when their technical debt is sustainably low, morale is high, and the majority of work is satisfying new user needs.
There’s nothing left to solve, at this point.

Even now, I find this mental model extremely valuable, but I do think it is missing one interesting
nuance that I’ve seen many teams run into in high-growth environments: suppressed and generated demand.
Suppressed demand is the idea of incoming work that isn’t incoming, because teams stop asking you for help.
Generated demand is when an increasingly effective team’s progress is noticed, and the previously
suppressed demand is converted into actual demand.

Lethain, authored by Will Larson, offers a unique perspective on engineering management, leadership, and organizational dynamics. Developers and engineering leaders can explore topics such as team building, career growth, and organizational design, gaining insights into building high-impact engineering organizations. With thoughtful reflections and actionable advice, Lethain serves as a resource for those navigating the complexities of engineering leadership.

Irrational Exuberance

A mental model for team recovery is extended with two new concepts: suppressed demand (work that never gets requested because teams stop asking) and generated demand (the flood of requests that arrives once a struggling team visibly improves). A team can do everything right, clear its backlog, and still end up just as underwater as before because success attracts previously hidden work. The solution is to run through the recovery cycle repeatedly until all suppressed demand surfaces. Teams with broad interfaces (customer ops, developer experience) tend to sit on much larger invisible backlogs than teams with narrow, well-defined interfaces.

Generated and suppressed demand.