The goldilocks of chaos
24 Apr 2026
In this moment:
Amy Phillips
Rosie Sherry
Not too much. Not too little. Just the right amount of chaos. Pretty please!
I just re-connected with Amy Phillips, a long-time friend, whose current role is a Senior Engineering Manager. This was for Into the MoTaverse podcast, so stay tuned in the coming weeks!
What's the story? One thing Amy spoke about was liking teams to have the right level of chaos. It makes our work fun and interesting.
I just re-connected with Amy Phillips, a long-time friend, whose current role is a Senior Engineering Manager. This was for Into the MoTaverse podcast, so stay tuned in the coming weeks!
What's the story? One thing Amy spoke about was liking teams to have the right level of chaos. It makes our work fun and interesting.
"A very, unfortunately difficult, like, non scientifically trackable metric, which I always like teams to have the right level of chaos."
Too little chaos leads to too much over-processing. Things end up moving slow. There is a lack of flow and traction. It can feel boring and stagnant. A lack of progress can feel somewhat depressing. And it can often be unclear what the way forward is. Ideas can be great, but if there aren't enough opportunities to make things happen, then it can quickly die out. Sometimes through lack of enthusiasm, other times simply because the timing just wasn't right.
"If you have, you know, like, processed everything, teams, I think well, they move very slowly, firstly. But I think they also feel quite, like low energy. People have kind of lost that ability to sort of individually think for themselves, to have those creative moments where they can just, like, see an opportunity and like, go for it or try something." — Amy Phillips
Too much chaos is when things feel overwhelming. It's hard to keep on top of everything. Balls are dropped. The overwhelm creates real problems, from a organisation, team and individual level. Real misalignment arises.
"You have complete opposite other end where it's like, you know, actual chaos. You're like, okay, we need to rein it back in a bit here. Like, people don't know what each other are doing, or we don't have a shared goal, or we're just causing loads of problems for customers or other teams." — Amy Phillips
The right kind of chaos. The sweet spot is high energy and creativity. It feels like manageable chaos. Or there is enough activity, data and traction. It's tapping into what we see happening, adapting, problem solving and process efficiency. Things are buzzing and full of energy.
It's the reality of the situation, rather than trying to predict for the future (which often ends up being wrong and costly, simply because predicting anything in the world we live in is incredibly hard).
"I like to try and get that sense of like, does it feel like we have high energy creativity, but in a controlled way?" — Amy Phillips
I personally reflected upon it for my own work within the MoTaverse, from the perspective that sometimes we need the activity and chaos to surface so we can identify the right time to build. Sometimes we have good ideas, but we're simply not ready to build them because there is not enough chaos, traction or activity happening.
It's happening. Internally in the MoTaverse we often use the term 'It's happening'. We often use the term in our Slack to point out when things actually happen. Maybe this is an identifier of the right kind of chaos that is actually working. We're working hard. Doing our best to be aligned to goals. We're juggling multiple things. And when it happens, we feel like we're passing The Ahh Test. It's never a clean and perfect path, it's always chaotic, but perhaps, it's the right kind of chaotic. It's just right.
Rosie Sherry
CEO & Founder at Ministry of Testing
She/Her
I've been working in the software testing and quality engineering space since the year 2000 whilst also combining it with my love for education and community. It turns out quality, community and education go nicely hand in hand.
🎓 MoT-STEC qualified
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Into the MoTaverse is a podcast by Ministry of Testing, hosted by Rosie Sherry, exploring the people, insights, and systems shaping quality in modern software teams.
