• Agile & Scrum Basics

How to make big decisions in small steps – Agile that is

Big decisions are not easily reversed. There is always a big investment involved. Consider, for example, the choice of technology on which to build your product. If you make the wrong choice, you may have to start all over again. You not only lose a lot of money, but also a lot of time.

One-way doors

Such a decision is also called a one-way door. Like those baggage hall gates at Schiphol Airport. If you go through those, you can’t go back. There’s no way back. Of course, you can avoid those gates as much as possible, but you can’t always avoid them.

Confidence, probability and impact

When dealing with such a proverbial gateway, you want to minimize the risk. In other words, you want to maximize trust. Then it’s smart to remember that risk has two components: the probability of something unpleasant happening and the impact of such an unpleasant event. Two characteristics of risk.

As an example, take a train trip. The chance of your train derailing is improbably low. But if it does, you won’t survive. So the impact is significant. Conversely, there is a reasonable chance that you will be delayed. But that’s not fatal, just annoying. So you just take the train because you are confident that is a good decision.

Building trust

Back to Agile. You can’t make big decisions “kinda. You either make them, or you don’t. What you can address Agile and Scrum, however, is building confidence in a big decision. For example, you can gather facts that allow you to precisely map the probability of a setback. Or you take steps to reduce the impact of a setback. You then build the confidence to make a big decision in small, tangible sprints.

The beginning of Virgin Atlantic

When Richard Branson started his airline, Virgin Atlantic, he needed planes. He was facing a big, expensive purchase. Therefore, if his airline did not become profitable, he could not simply quit. To lessen the impact of that decision, he negotiated that he could return the planes to the manufacturer within a year. That way he could still, with little risk, validate his proposition in the marketplace!

Choosing by advantages – CBA

My favorite system for making big decisions is CBA: Choosing By Advantages. It nicely maps out the level of confidence you have in a decision. As a result, it also provides clues to work in a structured way to increase that confidence. So you can start Scrumming the trust. If you want to know more, I’ll be speaking at “Agility in Construction” soon. There I’ll explain how CBA works in an Agile environment.

Are you facing a big decision yourself?

Feel free to get in touch or send me a message on Linkedin. Then we’ll see how we can use CBA to structure your backlog – your approach – to get to the right first button as quickly as possible.