“More than one person doing the same task? Crazy!”
“More than one person doing the same task? Crazy” is what I have often heard when I tell people about working in pairs and ensembles (aka mob programming and software teaming). Surely two people, each working on a different task, gets more work done in the same amount of time. It’s hard to persuade people that two or more people with diverse perspectives, experience, skills and biases complete a task faster. And they do it properly, so no need later for rework or bug fixing.
Other professions do this!
I recently witnessed a medical staff who exclusively worked by collaborating in pairs and groups. My husband was finding it hard to breathe, so we went to the emergency department of our local hospital, the University of Vermont Medical Center. He was rushed into a treatment area and. Doctors and other specialists poured in. Within ten minutes, five doctors were in this small cubicle evaluating and testing.
They quickly determined that my husband’s 25-year-old replacement aortic heart valve had finally given out. He was admitted to the hospital. Without going into the long story of why, his was a high risk and complex case. Over several days, many different doctors visited. They always came in pairs. For example, the attending cardiologist was always accompanied by a “fellow” cardiologist which is the next level down from “attending”. Often a heart surgeon would accompany them. I started to see a pattern!
Medical ensembling
We learned that twice a week at this cardiovascular care department, all the cardiologists meet to discuss all of the cases together. They agree on a plan for each patient. In my husband’s case, this included many scans and tests. They kept doing more to get more information. After several days they decided to try the “trans-catheter valve replacement” where they insert catheters into arteries to get the valve in place. The first procedure was not fully successful so there were more scans and more group discussions.
The doctors decided to repeat the procedure. This time, there were six doctors in the room, including the department head, and the surgeon who would do open heart surgery later on if the procedure didn’t work. Ensemble medicine! The doctor in charge of the procedure was definitely in charge, but the others were watching the picture from the echocardiogram and ready to advise. This time, the procedure was quick and successful.
If it’s good enough for life-critical work…
I’m making assumptions here, but it appears to me that they are using this collaborative approach to mitigate risk. Many specialists rush to the In the emergency room in case immediate action is required. They don’t know what the problem is yet. They have doctors with different specialties discussing the patients together. With a diverse group, they are less likely to succumb to unconscious bias in their decision-making.
Having at least two doctors visit the patient together helps make sure they don’t forget anything, and are better able to answer questions. It’s also reassuring to the patient! When they can take time to decide on the best treatment plan for each patient in their biweekly meetings, I imagine that they are better able to brainstorm together and come up with the best approach.
The benefits of ensembling
I did a bit of online searching to try to learn more about this. I learned “heart teams” are a thing! Here’s a quote from one article I found:
Use of the heart team approach for shared decision-making (SDM) on how to best treat and care for patients is a Class I recommendation in both the U.S. and European guidelines.
The idea behind such an approach is to have multiple stakeholders in a patient’s care meet and discuss the patient and determine the best possible way to care for them. The concept originally started to gain momentum when surgeons and interventional cardiologists were brought together to select patients during transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) trials; once specialists saw just how effective it could be, it only grew more and more in popularity.
Nobody is going around saying that having more than one doctor treating a patient is crazy or inefficient. I wish that software organizations who turn up their noses at pairing and ensembling would open their minds and see the huge benefits.
The post “More than one person doing the same task? Crazy!” appeared first on Holistic Testing with Lisa Crispin.