Decentralised Decision Making

Have you ever worried when delegating a task that the person will mess it up? That is the same fear that a lot of management teams have when empowering product teams to decide what features to build. Luckily we can break good decision making down to a formula:

Value & Principles +
Strategic Context +
Incentives +
Experience =
High Quality Decisions

In some of our past polls we identified that 73% of people did not have a product vision they could use to make product decisions. Over 60% of people didn’t understand the full business process they are working on. And up to 64% of teams are incentivised to produce outputs rather than outcomes.

It is much easier for management teams to just tell people what to build than to do the hard work of defining the strategy and aligning people. But it can be done - and it’s worth it!

This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

Is Agile over? by Jeff Gothelf
Agile has been the top business management process for over 20 years. Lately disenchantment with it has grown, Is Agile time over?

Decentralised Decision Making requires Context by Rory Madden
You need to know what is important to the business, how the company culture operates, and be able to leverage your past experience to make high quality decisions.

Product Direction

Mastering North Star Metrics by GoPractice
Learn how NSMs unify teams, drive cohesive strategies, and measure sustained growth, ensuring your product's trajectory towards success.

Stop Chasing Unicorns by John Cutler
There's a 94.5% chance your company isn't competing with the 1% of companies that regularly get called out for how they approach product. (Statistics may be fake)

Continuous Discovery

What Do You Do with Atypical Customer Stories? by Teresa Torres
When we interview customers regularly, we’ll inevitably hear an “atypical” story. Here’s why that’s a good thing.

Taming Opportunity Solution Trees by Matt O'Connell
Opportunity Solution Trees can quickly become unwieldy. Matt shares several scenarios teams find themselves in and offers tips for getting unstuck.

Continuous Design

Different Gets Ignored by Luke Wroblewski
At some point in their career, every designer has heard the request to make an element "pop more". The problem is if things are too different they get ignored.

Why users are ignoring your features by Peter Ramsey
Simple techniques to increase feature usage, retention and ultimately alter how users perceive the value of your product.

Continuous Delivery

Tied Up In Docs by Luke Abel
Luke shares how to prioritize and maintain meaningful documentation in the face of continuous change.

DevRel's Death as Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon by Shawn Wang
The underlying jobs-to-be-done are timeless so DevRel is not going anywhere. But there is an adjustment needed from past excesses.

Free UXDX New York
Community Event

Are you in New York and want a taste of the upcoming UXDX USA 2025 event? Then don’t miss out on this amazing FREE event. We have Miki Van Cleave from JP Morgan and Richard Dalton from Verizon sharing their insights on structuring teams & portfolios for success.

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

Check out more upcoming community events 

Video of the Week: Building a UX Team from the ground up at the FDIC

From managing a "Greenfield" project with no prior digital leadership to overcoming bureaucratic hurdles in hiring and building a cohesive, innovative UX team, Rebecca's journey is a testament to resilience and strategic thinking. Watch the full talk to learn about the challenges and creative solutions that Rebecca employed👇👇

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question: What is your view of your company's governance approach?

The good news is that 30% has efficient and useful, which is great to hear. The bad news is that 22% of people feel that their governance approaches are not useful and a further 23% find that their governance processes are bureaucratic.