There are two competitive restaurants that are rivals.

Meet Safe Haven: Consistency as a Brand

One of the restaurants is called “Safe Haven” and serves classic and timeless meals that everyone loves. Their wait staff always gets their time estimates correct for when orders would come out. Their food quality is always consistent and predictable which many patrons love. Only once there is enough of the same feedback from customers, Safe Haven would try to adjust their menu. The staff must come to an agreement together and meticulously plan, but changes must be slow and subtle. After all, clients like the fact that the recipes mostly stay the same, and changing Safe Haven’s beloved menu too quickly can risk damaging their brand!

Meet New Love: Speed as a Brand

Their rival restaurant called “New Love” is the exact opposite. They are always studying the most recent popular social media trends on the current market and adjusting their menu seasonally or based on viral fads. Some new menu items are more ambitious and take a long time to prepare before being served. Not all estimates are correct. The wait staff sometimes doesn’t even bother giving estimates to customers. In fact, their quality occasionally ends up being inconsistent depending on how much time they were given to create and obtain resources for a recipe that was based on popular demand. They can’t keep most of their successful items because New Love is famous for being up to date and always having something new. Regardless, patrons love the fact that the restaurant is quick to adjust to feedback, and many tolerate the unpredictable wait times before the food is served.

SCRUM Master vs. Product Owner: Two Leadership Archetypes

Both restaurants follow agile methodology but sit in opposite ends of the spectrum.

On one hand, we have Safe Haven, which fits more closely to a SCRUM Master’s ideal archetype: process-oriented, metrics-based leadership. And on the other hand, we have New Love, which fits a Product Owner’s ideal archetype: product-oriented, decisive leadership. Depending on their brand and values, they have found a balance that works well with the clients they are trying to attract.

There’s No Universal Sweet Spot

The optimal sweet spot can vary from team to team. A strategy that works for one restaurant may fail for the other. Some engineering projects, like Safe Haven, are not supposed to change without aggressive change management, a review board, and guardrails. Others are the exact opposite because they are expected to be highly agile and pivot quickly to customer feedback — just like New Love. Regardless, both teams need both process and agility but with varying degrees. They have developed their own strategies through years of scar tissue, experimentation, and failures. They are both balanced and able to thrive in their own ecosystem.

When Process Goes Too Far

Safe Haven may be currently succeeding with process-oriented leadership but then let’s say they go too far with this leadership style. Responding to customer feedback becomes slow, painful, or completely absent. Customers feel unheard and not listened to, and Safe Haven is so focused on making sure their metrics are predictable that they don’t realize that they are losing their clientele.

“They treat the same process as perfect the way it is without the need to change at all.”

When Agility Goes Too Far

New Love may be currently succeeding with their outcome-oriented leadership style, but similarly, they can also go too far with always delivering something new that they throw their own system to the opposite side of the spectrum. Say New Love’s leadership wants to hit deadlines and create new menu items quickly, so they push their chefs to work longer hours to hit quotas. New Love can become so focused on output and productivity, they don’t realize they are losing their own chefs!

The Secret Ingredient Both Restaurants Share

Both businesses may appear to have the exact opposite operating style, but having some complementary qualities in their setup is what’s keeping them balanced instead of deteriorating. For example, Safe Haven may be process oriented, but they still have a strategy for taking feedback and iterating even though they are slower than their rival just in this respect. New Love may be outcome oriented, but they still have a strategy for time management such as setting realistic expectations for their chefs based on the complexity and demand for the new recipes.

What makes both restaurants successful is that they still have some elements of the other rival. It means teams should adjust according to their brand’s customer demands but be flexible enough to see the strengths of both types of systems.

“Team balance doesn’t mean a team has to be exactly at the center of process and agility archetypes.”

What This Means for Engineering Leaders

Many engineering teams operate in the same way. A leader from either a highly process oriented or a highly agile team may prefer one style over the other, but few can appreciate how opposing paradigms are keeping their teams healthy and functional. The same strategy that used to work suddenly stops working.

“Understanding different leadership styles enables businesses and teams to know which levers to pull when things start breaking unexpectedly.”

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