To most software organizations, Covid-19 represents a fundamental surprise- a dramatic surprise that challenges basic assumptions and forces a revising of one’s beliefs (Lanir, 1986).
While many view this surprise as an outlier event to be endured, in this eMag we use the lens of Resilience Engineering to explore how software companies adapted (and continue to adapt), enhancing their resilience. By emphasizing strategies to sustain the capacity to adapt, this collection of articles seeks to more broadly inform how organizations cope with unexpected events. Drawing from the resilience literature and using case studies from their own organizations, engineers and engineering managers from across the industry will explore what resilience has meant to them and their organizations, and share the lessons they’ve taken away.
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The InfoQ eMag - Resilience Engineering in the Age of COVID include:
- Meeting the Challenges of Disrupted Operations: Sustained Adaptability for Organizational Resilience - The first article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience starts by laying a foundation for thinking about organizational resilience.
- Shifting Modes: Creating a Program to Support Sustained Resilience - The second article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience explores how organizations can shift to a Learn & Adapt safety mode and compares the traits of an organization that is well poised for successfully persisting this mode shift. This shift will not only make them safer but will also give them a competitive advantage.
- Adaptive Frontline Incident Response: Human-Centered Incident Management - The third article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience zeros in on the sources that comprise most of your company’s adaptive resources: your frontline responders. In this article, we draw on our experiences as incident commanders with Twilio to share our reflections on what it means to cultivate resilient people.
- Designing & Managing for Resilience - The fourth article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience explores the strategies used by engineering leaders to help create the conditions for sustained resilience. It provides stories, examples, and strategies towards designing an organizational structure to support resilient performance and managing for resilience.
- Continuous Learning as a Tool for Adaptation - The fifth and capstone article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience explores key themes with a special view on the practicality of organizational resilience. It also provides practical guidance to engineering leadership and recommendations on how to create this investment.
InfoQ eMags are professionally designed, downloadable collections of popular InfoQ content - articles, interviews, presentations, and research - covering the latest software development technologies, trends, and topics.