Agile Public Crisis Management — Is It Possible?

It is a debatable topic to explore agile in terms of public crisis management. Agile management and public crisis management have at least one thing in common: both are mostly used in situations with low predictability of future events. But it also raises questions:

• Is there anything else they have in common?
• Could crisis managers learn from agile management principles?

The Cynefin Framework

There is a model that is quite helpful to determine what kind of management approach fits certain problems: the Cynefin Model. It divides all situations into five context domains:

1. Simple / Obvious — The relation between cause and effect is known. Best practices exist. Problems can be sensed, categorized, and responded to (SCR).
2. Complicated — More expertise is needed to understand cause and effect. Good practices may exist. Problems should be sensed, analyzed, and responded to (SAR).
3. Complex — The relation between cause and effect can only be understood retrospectively. No single right answer. The only way forward is to probe, sense, and respond (PSR).
4. Chaotic — Cause and effect are completely unclear. You must act, sense, and respond (ASR).
5. Disorder — No other context type applies. The first step is moving the situation toward a known context.

Agile management is most at home in complex contexts — where continuous improvement through retrospective analysis fits the PSR pattern well.

Is a Crisis Complex or Chaotic?

A crisis can be defined as a situation that is:

1. Unexpected
2. Creates uncertainty
3. A threat to important goals

This places a crisis at least in the complex domain, if not chaotic or disordered. It cannot be obvious — otherwise it would not be unexpected. It cannot be merely complicated — an expert would have anticipated it.

The question then becomes: can we find a relation between cause and effect in retrospective analysis during a crisis?

For something like the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries raised radical countermeasures and later observed reduced infection rates — likely causal, but without proof. Other crises — like economic crises — allow clearer retrospective cause-and-effect analysis.

Current Crisis Management Structure

Crisis management in Germany is organized in structures inspired by the fire department, military, and civil protection organizations. These have a clear hierarchy where supervisors give orders downward. The agile world proclaims flat hierarchies — this is a real tension.

However, the management cycle of these organizations is strikingly similar to the agile PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) pattern:

• Situation assessment: exploration of the situation, control of command effects
• Planning: evaluation, decision about actions
• Command

This continuous cycle of adjustment based on new information is essentially the same loop as an agile sprint retrospective applied in real-time.

Conclusion

Agile management and public crisis management are less different than they appear. Both operate in unclear situations with unpredictable decision outcomes. The management mechanics are similar — except for the hierarchical structure that crisis management requires for coordination at scale.

The insight: crisis management could benefit from more explicit retrospectives and probe-sense-respond thinking, while the agile world could learn something from civil protection's clear role definition and command discipline when speed matters most.