We had an interesting discussion in class on how one can detect you might be in survival mode. Here are some possible early warning signs:

1. There is a perception or feeling of continuous urgency
2. There is lack of context (why are we doing this? where are we heading? When is this expected? what are the expectations?)
3. The team is forced into a state where they are always reacting to changes (key word here is forced because a self organizing team can choose to simply react with changes such as during  a continuous delivery flow). Not being able to choose whether to plan some things out.
4. There is no time to reduce risk (technical debt, bus factors etc)
5. The team is unable to deliver
6. There is only time to take shortcuts
7. A long period of stress
8. Being non productive for a long period of time