Member-only story
Making good decisions
In the race towards agility, we’re losing the ability to think through our big decisions. Here’s a guide to better decisions.
The genesis of agile was that we weren’t very good at software projects. Agile was one response to this, which became popular because it let everyone off the hook—“let’s not think hard now; it can wait.”
The era of product management, which is also ending, compounded the issue because it taught product managers to “follow the customer” and the money would come. The logical flaw in that argument is that customers want gold plating of your product, and they want it for free.
We’re moving back to a world of higher interest rates, lower rates of return, and proper decision-making, and this story discusses how to make good decisions that don’t leave value on the table.
“Life is a sum of all your choices”—Albert Camus
This statement applies to your project or product, too.
The problems with how we make decisions today
There are many problems with decision-making today:
- We’re impatient
- We’re suckers for good advocacy
- We love the emotional pull of a story
- We don’t challenge ourselves enough with alternatives
- We neglect uncertainty
- We are optimistic
- We confuse ‘minimum viability’ with ‘done.’
- We jump to conclusions because they make sense to us
- Even when we seek other input, we fall into the confirmation bias trap and dismiss evidence that contradicts our own
- We confuse agreement with quality
- We satisfice and leave value on the table
At the heart of every good project is a series of good decisions. The patron saint of Decision Quality, Carl Spetzler, shows that the best strategy is frequently twice as valuable as a good enough strategy: so much for Agile. In today’s business environment, you need to know a good decision when you make it.
