The Cult of Urgency
Not Everything Needs to Be a Fire Drill
In software development, there's often an overwhelming sense that everything is urgent. Every project, every bug fix, and every new feature becomes a fire drill, turning the team’s workflow into a continuous state of emergency. And it’s not just within the team; leadership, stakeholders, and outside influences often change direction, demanding sudden shifts in priorities and turning what was once a well-defined plan into a chaotic scramble.
But here’s the hard truth: not everything is urgent. And constantly treating every task like a crisis can burn out teams, derail strategic planning, and compromise the quality of what we deliver. Let’s talk about why the culture of constant urgency hurts both teams and products, and how we can push back and prioritize more effectively.
The Impact of Constant Urgency
When every project feels like a fire drill, it doesn’t just create stress, it impacts the entire development process. Teams lose sight of their goals, communication breaks down, and the work becomes reactive rather than strategic.
I remember working on a project where, halfway through, we were suddenly told to shift focus. A key stakeholder decided that a feature we hadn’t prioritized was now critical, and everything else had to wait. We scrambled to adapt, re-planning the milestones, moving things around, and trying to squeeze in a whole new set of tasks. What was once a clear roadmap devolved into chaos. In the end, neither the original goal nor the new "urgent" feature were delivered on time. Instead of focusing on value, we got lost in trying to do everything all at once.
This is the problem with constant urgency, it disrupts focus and makes it impossible to execute a well-thought-out plan. Agile is about adaptability, but it’s also about delivering incremental value. When everything is treated as a crisis, nothing gets the attention it truly needs.
When Leadership Shifts Priorities Too Often
Let’s address the elephant in the room: leadership often plays a key role in perpetuating the cult of urgency. Stakeholders change priorities, senior executives push pet projects, and suddenly the team finds itself pulled in multiple directions. These shifts can feel like mandates, and teams often feel powerless to push back.
The result? Frustration. Development teams start to feel like they’re running in circles, constantly switching gears based on the whims of others rather than sticking to a planned and thoughtful process. Not only does this kill productivity, but it also leads to disengagement. It’s hard to stay motivated when you know that tomorrow’s “urgent” priority might be thrown out by next week.
In one of the Team Health-Checks I facilitated, we discussed how our team was constantly reprioritizing based on external pressures. This meant we rarely finished what we set out to do, and team morale suffered as a result. We felt like we were always putting out fires, but never actually building anything meaningful. The constant sense of urgency was stripping away our ability to think strategically and make real progress.
Why “Everything Is Urgent” is a Myth
The belief that everything is urgent is not only a myth but a dangerous one. When everything is treated as top priority, nothing truly is. You can’t focus on what matters most when you’re stretched thin trying to deliver everything at once.
From a leadership perspective, this mindset creates an unsustainable environment where teams are set up to fail. It’s easy to say "Just get it done," but the reality is that without clear prioritization, the quality of the work suffers, deadlines get missed, and teams burn out. When a product team is constantly firefighting, they don’t have the bandwidth to think creatively, solve deep problems, or deliver long-term value.
Pushing Back Against the Cult of Urgency
So how do we push back against this culture of constant urgency? How can teams protect themselves from the whirlwind of changing priorities and relentless pressure?
Here are some strategies that I’ve seen work in practice:
Reinforce the Importance of a Clear Goal: Every project needs a clear objective. When leadership or stakeholders try to shift focus mid-work, it’s important to push back by emphasizing the original Goal. This goal acts as the North Star for the team, helping to maintain focus and alignment. Remind leadership that changing priorities too often derails progress and impacts the team’s ability to deliver real value.
Create a Prioritization Framework: Not everything can be urgent. A prioritization framework can help the team and leadership categorize work based on impact and urgency. For example, urgent issues might be tied to critical customer pain points or business-critical outages, while less urgent tasks might involve internal improvements or non-blocking bugs. By establishing this framework, you can evaluate each request based on its true urgency and push back when something doesn’t meet the threshold.
Time-box Strategic Thinking: One way to combat constant urgency is to carve out dedicated time for strategic thinking. In one team, we introduced a "no-new-priorities" window, meaning that during specific sprints or time periods, we refused to accept any new incoming work. This gave the team the freedom to focus on long-term initiatives without the fear of interruptions, allowing for deeper thinking and better solutions.
Engage Leadership in Transparent Conversations: It’s not easy, but having open conversations with leadership about the impact of shifting priorities can make a big difference. Use data to show how changes in direction impact timelines, quality, and morale. Teams often have more leverage than they realize when they present facts that link these disruptions to tangible outcomes like missed deadlines or technical debt.
Empower Teams to Push Back: It’s critical for teams to feel empowered to question whether something is truly urgent. Agile is about responding to change, but that doesn’t mean teams should be at the mercy of every shift in focus. Teams need to be able to ask, “Why is this urgent?” and understand the bigger context before making knee-jerk reactions to new requests.
Long-Term Focus Over Short-Term Chaos
Software development thrives on focus, iteration, and constant improvement. However, none of these things can happen in an environment where everything feels like a fire drill. Leadership needs to recognize that changing priorities too often isn’t a sign of agility. It’s a sign of chaos. Similarly, teams need to find the courage and the tools to push back when urgency becomes the default mode of operation.
Remember, not everything is a crisis. There is immense value in saying "no" to false urgencies so that your team can focus on what really matters. The end goal is delivering quality work that solves real problems. Not burning out by trying to solve everything all at once.
In the end, creating a culture where thoughtful prioritization is respected (by both leadership and teams) will lead to better products, happier teams, and fewer unnecessary fire drills.
