Crunch time.
Every software team hits it eventually. A surprise requirement, a deadline that can’t move, a week where everyone is going to have to dig in. The question isn’t whether it happens. It’s whether your team comes out the other side intact.
When the surprise lands
In July 2024, a significant unplanned requirement came in with a firm external deadline. I was on vacation when it happened, which meant the news reached my team before it reached me. By the time I was in the loop, the decision had already been made to bring the remote team into the office to encourage in-person collaboration during the push.
There was grumbling. Of course there was. Nobody loves being asked to travel on short notice, and nobody loves having a surprise dropped on them mid-summer. That’s a completely human response to a genuinely inconvenient situation.
My job wasn’t to manage the grumbling away — it was to really listen. My job was to make sure my team knew I saw them as people first. That they weren’t just resources being deployed to solve a problem. If I could establish that clearly enough, the rest would follow.
Getting the ducks in a row
I hand-wrote a thank-you note for each team member, acknowledging their specific contributions and what I valued about working with them. I also hand-made each person their own little rubber duckie.
If you’re not familiar with rubber duck debugging, it’s a real technique — explaining your code out loud to an inanimate object helps you spot your own errors. I found a low-sew crochet pattern online, used Caron yarn, and attached a keychain loop to the top of each one so people could hang them nearby. The goal wasn’t to bribe anyone into good spirits. It was to signal, as concretely as I could, that I was thinking about each of them individually.
One team member who had recently transferred from another department seemed genuinely surprised to be singled out for appreciation. On his previous teams, crunch was just expected. Being acknowledged for showing up felt unfamiliar to him, and watching him recalibrate a little was one of the more memorable moments of that week.
My team members still have their duck friends at their desk today.
A promise on both sides
The other thing that made this crunch survivable was being firm about scope. My scrum master and I built a report that tracked the work story by story, showing where we expected to hit our targets, where we were at risk of falling behind, and what we planned to do about it. The engineers could see at a glance what the expectations were and what levers they could pull when things got tight.
That visibility mattered. When scope is defined and the finish line is real, people can push toward something. When scope keeps expanding, the finish line keeps moving, and that’s what burns people out. By holding firm on scope with the product team, we could make honest commitments to the engineers. Each side was making a promise. Each side could see what they were getting out of the deal.
We did have one last-minute addition land in the final weekend before delivery. We worked through it. But because the team trusted that we were protecting them from unnecessary scope creep wherever we could, and because they understood why this one couldn’t wait, they got through it without it feeling like a betrayal.
We hit the deadline.
What actually makes crunch survivable
It isn’t perks or free dinner. Those things aren’t bad, but they’re not the point. The point is trust that was built before the crunch ever started.
If your team knows from consistent experience that you will go to bat for them, that you notice their work, that you see them as people and not headcount — then when you need them to dig in, they will. Not because they have to. Because they want to see it through together.
One team member put it simply after that week: “Your leadership kept it bearable.” Another wrote: “Just want to say I appreciate the way you handled the situation.”
That’s what I was going for. Not heroics. Just people who felt seen, working together toward something they understood and believed in.
The ducks helped too. In more ways than one.
Dowell Dev 