Why search and rescue is like software development

Editor's Notes

• #3: Hello, so I’m going to talk about what I do when I’m not at work, and how that helps when I am. I’m a Search Manager and water rescue expert for Oxfordshire's Lowland Rescue team.
• #4: You’ve probably not heard of Lowland Rescue before. Don’t worry, I hadn’t either. You’ll have heard of Mountain Rescue and the RNLI. We do the same, but for the large bit of the country that isn’t a mountain or the sea.
• #5: As a Search Manager, I’m in charge on scene. The police delegate to us, so I decide if, how and where to search, the relative priorities, I allocate resources, and plan longer term to get the right people at the right time.
• #6: Perhaps the largest search I managed, included being responsible for the search efforts and welfare of something like 50 searchers, 6 dog teams, a over dozen police officers as well as the police helicopter, and searches can last for days.
• #7: At some point I realised that, there are transferrable skills between these roles and software development, and not only that, but they're skills that it’s typically challenging to pick up elsewhere.
• #8: In this role, I’m literally making decisions that might be the difference between life or death. I think the hardest decision I hope I ever have to make is whether to continue a search or stand it down if we’ve been out for hours and not found anything.
• #9: If you pre-empt a tricky decision you can remove the emotion from it; like establishing clear criteria laying out when we’ll stop a search turns that awful decision into something that’s much easier.
• #10: Decisions I make may well have to be justified in a coroner’s court or to IPCC, so that focuses the mind into not only recording when and why the decisions were made, but also making them based on data.
• #11: I have large stats books listing find locations and survival times to help with SAR decisions. But using data is something we should all do, as is collecting data now you'll need for future decisions.
• #12: We can all think of a stressful situation, be it a release deadline, a sprint demo, or a treating a critically injured patient on a hill side. None of us can avoid stressful situations, so we need to learn to deal with them effectively.
• #13: As engineers we understand the concept of bandwidth, but SAR has taught me that we all have emotional bandwidth too, and it's when that runs out that we stop dealing effectively with the situation.
• #14: Easiest thing you can do to improve your stress response is recognise when yours or a colleagues' emotional bandwidth is maxed out and look at what is consuming that. Then reduce the bandwidth required by stressful tasks.
• #15: In SAR we train and we produce check lists for standard operating procedures. For software dev, simple things like producing a demo check list, or rehearsing demos can reduce bandwidth required by that task and allow us to cope better.
• #16: Our stakeholders are the blue light agencies that call us out. There’s no point us spending time and effort investing in skills (features) that they don’t want or won’t use. Likewise, we need to look after our brand.
• #17: It doesn’t matter what skills we’ve got if we’re not trusted to deploy them. We need to understand what our stakeholders care about, feed that into the prioritisation and, most importantly communicate effectively with them.
• #18: We’ve a range of different stakeholders; OxSAR has taught me how to communicate with suicidal missing people, those suffering from dementia, all ranks of the Police and Fire services and even those right at the top of government.
• #19: That’s vital for engineers too; we need to be able to explain to our PO or PM why a technical change is necessary, using terms that they understand, and how it enables them to meet their needs.
• #20: Decisions You’ll need to make hard decisions Preempt them if possible Record and be prepared to justify them Use data to make them Collect data for future decisions. Stress Due to overloaded emotional bandwidth Be aware of demands our own and others’ bandwidth Make stressful tasks easier by practicing and checklisting. Stakeholders: Understand what they want Establish and maintain trust. Tailor your communication to them
• #21: Decisions You’ll need to make hard decisions Preempt them if possible Record and be prepared to justify them Use data to make them Collect data for future decisions. Stress Due to overloaded emotional bandwidth Be aware of demands our own and others’ bandwidth Make stressful tasks easier by practicing and checklisting. Stakeholders: Understand what they want Establish and maintain trust. Tailor your communication to them