A cheap decision model for engineering project focused on making the best of the team's collaborative knowledge, while facilitating fast and healthy decisions, and empowering people to grow.

1. An engineering decision model for scale
Messy Opinions,
Neat Ownership
@rudyrigot

2. !
?

4. DRI
Leaves
Lean

5. “Visionary” single-owner
Some naive models
Consensus

6. Why?

7. Uncertainty
No one can be right all the time
Iterative
Can be fixed in flight
Serendipity
Wrong can be good
Expert bias
Silo risk
Why for engineering?

8. Management / process
costs
Why for scale?
Emotions, conflicts:
time and morale costs
Weak alignment costs

9. How?
Neat ownership, messy opinions

10. One clear owner
Neat ownership
Doesn’t matter who
Not a manager

11. Neat ownership
Everyone knows who
Everyone owns
some decisions

12. Neat ownership
It doesn’t matter
if the decision is wrong

13. Neat ownership
However, bound by
overlapping team
ownership

14. Messy opinions
Everyone should raise
messy concerns
Well formulated, with
solution ideas

15. Listen,
Messy opinions
and explain
For idea sourcing
& problem ownership
For alignment
Disregard, not dismiss

16. Until all concerns
addressed
Messy opinions
Cheap!
Conversation stops,
moving on

17. Why again?

18. Management / process
costs
Why for scale?
Emotions, conflicts:
time and morale costs
Weak alignment costs

19. Management / process
costs
Why for scale?
Emotions, conflicts:
time and morale costs
Weak alignment costs
Organic influence
building
People growth
Continuous communication
training at scale

20. Roles

21. All organic
Senior/lead engineer
Nothing special

22. Protects the checks and balances
Manager
Does NOT make the call
But owns: careers, org comm, …

23. Caveats

24. • Communication overhead (but, heh, alignment, uncertainty, …)
• Unsettling to newcomers
• “Is it democracy here?”
• And if it doesn’t work?
Caveats

25. How about you?
What’s your engineering
decision model?

26. Questions?