Clayton Lengel-Zigich: Welcome to another episode of the Agile weekly podcast I am Clayton Lengel-Zigich.

Roy vandeWater: And I am Roy vandeWater.

What Does It Mean To Revisit A Decision

Clayton: Today we are going to be talking about the churn of revisiting decisions. I guess by that, what do we really mean, Roy?

We mean a team makes a decision about maybe how to implement something or some approach of solving some problem. Then maybe even after the fact it gets, I guess, revisited or gets talked about again and kind of the impacts…Does that sound about right?

Roy: Yeah.

Clayton: An example that we actually both saw this week was a story got demoed to the product owner kind of informally and it got accepted. After the story got accepted, and actually on the board physically moved over to done, with the green pin, and the whole nine yards, someone on the team kind of started objecting about “well we really should have done it this way, and I wasn’t involved, and something, something, something.” What was that impact of that on the team, do you think?

Roy: It felt really odd, because the team had made the decision to move forward in a particular way, and I think we kind of have agreed, probably not explicitly, but kind of agreed as a team, implicitly, that if you’re not there, then you’re going to kind of abide by the teams decisions.

It sounded like this person wasn’t present when some decision was made, and when they got back, the story had gotten accepted and they’re like “well we could have it this other way,” and the team’s like “OK, yeah it could have gotten done this other way, but it’s done now, so why would we spend more time on it.” We delivered a value we set out to deliver and if it becomes a problem, we can revisit that decision.

When There Is New Information

Clayton: I see people revisit those kinds of choices when they make a decision based on the information they have at a certain time, and then they get more information later, and then they want to re‑hash it again. I think maybe what you’re getting at is: hey, we finished it, it’s done, we delivered some value, let’s just move on. Do you think there’s still room for learning new information, and fixing it, or making it better?

Roy: There’s absolutely room for learning new information. Learning new information is always better, because it allows you to make better decisions moving forward. That’s the whole reason why we have retrospectives.

I definitely think that, like in this type of situation where if it becomes a problem, we’ll totally revisit it and we might choose to solve it in a totally different way, since we now have newer information. Just because you have newer information, you have to be careful about whether or not the cost is worth the value that you’re going to get out of it. In this case, some features delivered that provide some value x.

That feature could be rebuilt in a way that either reduces technical debt or whatever, but if rebuilding it, still only allows it to deliver value x, you have two choices. One that has zero cost, which his leave it like it is. One that has a significant cost.

It’s going to take some amount of time in order to build it, but delivers the same value. If you look at it from that perspective, it makes sense to go with one that’s got zero cost.

The Cost Of Re-Work

Clayton: Do you think that an argument could be made that “It really doesn’t have zero cost because now we know something new. Now that we know this new thing that changes how we would’ve done it and we would do it so much better this time”? Is that the motivation you think that a lot of times decisions get revisited?

Roy: I can understand why that would be a motivation for a why a decision gets revisited. But I would say like, “Great! You learned a whole bunch of new stuff. That’s going to be awesome. The feature’s that we’re building moving forward. Let’s build those because we don’t have a shortage of work to do.”

Nobody has that problem. People who have that problem don’t have jobs anymore.

Clayton: [laughs] Do you think that some of this conversation comes back to the simplest possible solution where you’re trying to do just the simplest thing you can do, which is often times very difficult to do the simplest, to deliver whatever that value is?

Because that sometimes when you’re making those choices about what the simplest thing to do is, you maybe make trade‑offs or maybe you don’t get a lot of consensus?

The Trade Off’s Of Technical Debt

Roy: I think Derek’s actually been…I don’t know if he said it on the podcast before but I know that he’s definitely said to me in conversations before as saying like, ” A team that is not creating any technical debt while they’re moving forward is probably not a high‑performing team.

A high‑performing team would be moving quickly and making the trade‑off of sometimes accruing some technical debt that they know they’ll have to pay off later in exchange for increased performance.”

Clayton: That would be more calculated debt, not the big bottle of mess that…

Roy: Right, exactly. It’s the type of debt that an investor goes into. Not the type of debt that a…

Clayton: You get from running up your credit card buying stuff.

Roy: Right. Exactly. Right.

Decider Protocol To Make Decisions

Clayton: One of things that’s in the protocols that we like a lot. We like to use decider to make decisions as a team. If you have new information later, you basically support the best idea that exists at the time.

You have to have the faith in your team that they’re going to support the best idea. You can always come back and make a new proposal to change things but you would never revisit something. You would always be doing it in the spirit of moving forward.

Roy: Well, the commitments, you are to support the best idea at the time, right? Regardless of where it came from or what it is, but while that’s the case, you will also always continue to seek to improve that idea or find a better one.

Clayton: If you find a better idea, great, but your situation changes as well. You are no longer in the same green field state at the end of the course of the decision, right? Like in our example, you’re no longer at that same state where you haven’t built this feature yet. You now have something.

That changes the scope of your decision. You can’t think of it in the exact same mindset as before you started it.

Roy: Do you think if you’re using the decider because of the format for the decider protocol and the way that it is basically so structured to deliver that consensus, you never really are revisiting things because you are always making a new proposal to improve? Is that kind of what you’re getting at, I guess?

Clayton: Yes, it is, but I have definitely found myself, in certain cases, with the decider feeling myself a little bit conflicted, because I felt like I had a better idea that completely against the previous Decider and as part of accepting, thumbs‑upping or glad‑handing a decider, you promise not to sabotage the decision.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m sabotaging the decision when in reality I’m actually proposing a better one. Like I’m not really sabotaging it because everybody else on the team has the opportunity to thumbs‑down it, right?

I’m just presenting the time with an alternative choice.

Avoiding Decisions Until Certain People Are Present

Roy: I think, everyone can probably think of somebody that they work with on their team that has a tendency to maybe revisit things or revisit decisions, especially ones that they were not part of. Do you think that’s something that a team should really be concerned about?

If there are people on the team that are always bringing kind of the old, decided stuff, should they go out of their way to avoid making decisions until that person is there?

Clayton: No. I think if you’re, see I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been experiencing something very similar, and I think what is important is that if you are not present at the time the decision is made and you come back and you have some additional information, you have the responsibility to disclose what you know.

Then, it is up to the team to choose whether or not to revisit that decision. I would say it would be good for like you to make a decision, me not to know about it, come back, find out and then, say like, “Oh Clayton, by the way, were you aware of this?” Give you some information.

What would not be acceptable, though, is me pushing the agenda and the opinion I have. I wouldn’t be like, “Clayton, you are doing it wrong. We need to do it this other way. Let’s undo your decision and do it my way instead.”

That’s a totally different message than, “Here’s some new information, what would you like to do with it?”

The Emotional Needs In Decision Making

Roy: I guess, I feel like th