SAMM
Situational Awareness Management Model
SAMM emerged from years of experiencing software teams from different perspectives — as a backend engineer working within the system and as a technical leader responsible for guiding it. Across different organisations, leadership styles, personalities and ways of working, one observation became increasingly clear: the same people, processes and technology can require very different leadership depending on the situation the system is experiencing.
Experience provides patterns and possible responses, but effective leadership requires understanding what the system needs at a particular moment — its context, its people, their motivation, and the conditions influencing how they work and evolve. This is where the Situational Awareness journey begins .
SAMM starts from the relationship between People, Process and Technology — the Golden Triangle of Human Systems . These dimensions continuously influence one another, while people experience their combined effects through motivation, challenge, learning, relationships and the way they perform their work.
SAMM does not replace existing methodologies, redefine processes or technologies, or attempt to change people. It introduces an additional layer of organisational situational awareness: observing how the system and its current conditions affect people and their motivation, understanding how those conditions evolve over time, and using that awareness to create the environment in which the system can achieve its best sustainable performance at each moment.
Observe the system. Understand the situation. Lead with context.
SAMM understands teams as living human systems that continuously learn, adapt and evolve. Explore their underlying complexity, observable human attributes, Technical and Evolutionary Capabilities, and motivation as the energy that fuels productivity and drives the system forward.
SAMM observes the situation experienced by the human system and how its processes and context are affecting people. Through continuous observation and learning, the Intervention Roadmap provides recommended processes and areas of attention according to the situation, enabling a more contextual and adaptive intervention.
Technical debt is not an isolated technical problem with a universal solution. SAMM observes technical debt within the situation of the human system, considering its impact on people, motivation, knowledge, delivery and the system’s ability to evolve, so that technical decisions and interventions can be adapted to the context rather than applying the same response in every situation.
SAMM becomes actionable through a set of practices integrated into everyday leadership, making the human system, its capabilities, motivation and current situation progressively observable. Practices such as Onboarding, 1:1s, Tech Space and Situational Pulse help contrast perceptions, build Situational Memory and turn situational awareness into shared understanding and context-aware action.
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