Decision, Reversal, Frustration: Navigating Governance After an Incident

Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: Welcome

back everyone to this another

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episode of facilitating Stories on

Software Architecture and Design.

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So we are gonna talk today with

Andrea, who's gonna tell us a story,

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and with us is Andrew as well.

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Hello Andrew.

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this content series, which we don't give

it a name, we don't call it a podcast or

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a flog or anything, it's just a series

of, conversations about stories where you

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might be an architect or a designer that

believe that we need to do decentralized

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decision making or facilitating

software architecture, but you struggle.

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And these are all stories about

these struggles that we on a

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daily basis still have as well.

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So it's also a little bit for us.

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We learn a lot.

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in the previous episode, we

say, well, as long as nobody's

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listening, doesn't matter.

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We're learning, so we hope

you are learning as well.

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So, Andrea, it's up to

you to tell a story.

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Andrea Magnorsky: It's my turn

to tell a story and I'm switching

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Tuck a little bit, as I tend to do.

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And, what I'm gonna give you is, a

scenario then I'm, of wanna ask some

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questions and how would you go about it?

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So this is the scenario.

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Imagine you just arrived at work

and you're doing work stuff, and

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suddenly there's a, a ping in your

whatever messaging platform you use

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for, communicating with your people.

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And in there, there's an incident

like a high importance incident.

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One of your colleagues.

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Goes off, investigates, you're like

up in your hand and they're fine.

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And then during thing, colleague,

decides to stop something.

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They're like, this client can't do X.

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That's their decision.

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And it's in the middle an incident.

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That's what happens that time.

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Because it's a high, important instance.

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the very next day, let's say there's a

meeting with your colleague, yourself,

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and a few other peoples that are higher

in the hierarchy to review this and other

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things during that scenario, the review

is that the action that your colleague

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took was correct, which is an interesting

point that you might, want to, comment on.

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then, that's where it stays.

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However, there is an obvious thing

that, people that are in the hierarchy

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a little bit higher than you, they want

to investigate further to see if this

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is something like, what do we do next?

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Okay, this was the good decision for

now, but what do we do in the future?

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Someone volunteers to

do the investigation.

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Another one of your colleagues, they go

off into it and they come back saying

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that actually we should allow it.

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There's another meeting.

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This same group where this happened,

communicates to the rest of us that

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the decision has been reverted and

actually precisely the thing that

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was stopped is with no change.

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The only thing that

changes the understanding.

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The hierarchy, has, but with not a,

a lot, extra context, but not much.

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Your colleague is, not completely

impressed because they are,

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well, this is gonna happen again.

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That's the context.

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That's the story.

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The story obviously, I

mean, I'm sure it happens.

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Something similar, probably

happened to you, so.

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This question that I'm gonna

pose is about governance.

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We were talking about it a little

bit in the previous episode.

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And so also about how to, how

would you deal with this or what

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could happen in option A, a very

autocratic kind of centralized place

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versus b, more decent central place.

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Like, can we, can we talk

about the whole experience?

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Like incidents happen all the time.

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You make decisions, None of

those things are, strange and they

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will happen in both, scenarios.

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But I would love to hear about,

how things could be different or

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the same, like any similarities and

differences is where we should top off.

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especially focusing on governments.

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Whoever wants to go first.

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Andrew Harmel-Law: The only thing I

wanted to say that I think you implied

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happened, but one of the biggest things

that I make sure is like, maybe you

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have to retrospectively create it,

you document each decision separately.

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So you write an a, DR

maybe retrospectively.

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'cause the person didn't have time.

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They just, you know, based on

the things they knew at the

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time, they took a decision.

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so that should be represented in a DR.

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Then the revisiting of that

decision shouldn't reopen that.

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A DR, after they're decided

acted upon ADR is a read only.

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That's like a big deal for me.

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So then there should be a subsequent

decision, which supersedes the older one.

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So you've got the record of the

history and all that kind of stuff.

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when you, if you don't have that, if you

keep going back and reopening decisions.

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That's just like paralysis, right?

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And then it becomes very emotional

and all this kinda stuff.

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So I've got other thoughts about shelf

for Kenny, but that's the big one.

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It's like, right?

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'cause it's not like one decision you

kept going back to one was actually taken

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and then there was a subsequent thing.

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So that's, would recommend it separately.

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Andrea Magnorsky: Yeah, it's

more like the, I'm making an

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emphasis on a few aspects here.

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The governance, the human story and

what happened, also what we like it

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to be different and how, and feels

like one coherent story itself.

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Like at the end of the day, the system,

has like is behaving in a certain way.

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that's kind of interesting too.

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That's the three kind of.

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That I'm seeing in the story.

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So I totally agree on the, on the

decisions themselves and that they

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should be not, not all encompassing

and, oh, actually, let me just,

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let me just one more thing and

then you'll never finish anything.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: I think Rebecca,

and we should invite her once she talks

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about the earliest responsible moment.

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You can take a decision, right?

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And, you have the last responsible moment.

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But the earliest, I think

she calls it earliest.

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but she says, take him

as soon as possible.

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And then you go into, Andrew's not right.

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We can take him now and then

you can supersede them later on.

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And I think.

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It's the same with coding, right?

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Make small codes.

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People are very afraid of

making a decision there.

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So that's the human aspect.

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For some reason, people are very much

afraid of taking smaller decisions

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or smaller changes for some, reason.

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and the second thing that, I

hear you say, and I'm curious

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and that's a question to you.

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I, she's not impressed by the decision,

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People sometimes see decisions

as a single thing in time, but.

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It might be many decisions.

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So for some person coming in and,

and maybe it's a new person, right?

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And they take a decision, but for

that person it might be maybe the 50th

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time that it happened to that person.

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Right.

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I'm not sure if that was the case here.

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Is that what, what you're, because they're

not, I felt they're not impressed, so I'm

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like, okay, that there's something there.

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Maybe, I'm not sure.

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Andrea Magnorsky: So, for some further

context, in this particular case that

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I'm thinking of, some of this comes as

a background of we're not investing in

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actually solving our systemic issues.

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And when there's an incident, we are

the ones that have to respond back end.

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this particular colleague was very

tired of like, well, you know, why

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can't we actually fix the problems?

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Why do we keep saying yes?

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And the pressure is always like, well,

because the market moves faster than us.

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Which is, I get it.

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Also there's a balance

there that needs to be had.

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You can only.

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Uh, plasterers over your wounds.

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So many times, if you keep

kind of going, like imagine

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you have a wound there, right?

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And it's not healing.

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And so before it starts

healing a little bit.

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Uh, plaster.

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Okay, cool.

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Maybe okay for now, but you have

to wash your hands, et cetera.

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Soon after you plaster, plaster,

plaster thinking, plasters, and at some

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point your hand actually gets damaged.

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I think this is the point at

which my colleague was when

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they were not impressed.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: Yeah, I think

that goes a little bit into hierarchical

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structures, and I have a little bit of the

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thing against, not against, but the, the

partnership of management roles, because

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what I usually see is that managers

are like, I'm in this position to help.

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But what does help mean?

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So that A implies that people need

help that's the first assumption

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I see managers take, do they

actually need help with this?

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And b, is it for me to solve?

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So, this is what I see a lot of

managers do wrong instead of.

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Asking first, okay,

where do you need help?

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How can I help you make this

decision better next time?

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And give people insight.

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They rather think, Hey,

I need to help them.

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That's assumption A, and then they

are already moving forward, so

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there's not even an agreement on

should we change or should we help?

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Someone's already moving forward with,

okay, then we need to go forward and that.

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That's like a mental

model separation, right?

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One person is like, ah, this was fine.

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We took the decision, let's move on.

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The other person is, well, no,

no, we're gonna investigate this.

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So it should be more facilitation

and collaboration in that point than.

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You know, it came as a news

flash a week later that again,

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someone else took the decision.

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And I've had this with a

manager that says, no, I'm

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not gonna take this decision.

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You're gonna take this decision else.

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We're gonna breed into the

systematic problem that

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Yep.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: Teams don't

make decisions because they're, and

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then a manager takes decision, but

they're not okay with that decision.

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So

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Yep.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: that

manager actually took a stand.

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I'm not taking a decision anymore because

every time I'm just feeding the beast.

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Andrea Magnorsky: I think in this

situation it was, really hard

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to do anything that feels right.

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Basically, this is why I think it's

such a good place for asking about

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governance and asking about what

would this situation feel like and be

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like, and how can we facilitate these

decisions in a more centralized space?

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That's why I thought this is like

a rock in a hard place, right?

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So,

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Andrew Harmel-Law: I think

there's something as well

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about like allyship, right?

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And I don't just mean like, like DEI

allyship, like you said, Kenny, right?

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You could lend your political

capital or organizational capital

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or whatever, social capital to the

person making the decision and echo

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and repeat it as opposed to taking it

on, like make sure that the ownership

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still belongs where that person is

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the weight of your experience

and maybe extra context, right?

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Like, you know, this

isn't just happened once.

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This happens all the time.

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And here is me as a manager saying 30%

of this team's time is spent restarting

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this system because of this thing

that's, you know, and so therefore we

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know that, you know, the revenue from

various customers is, is super key.

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But also we know that the loss, you

know, there might be access and have

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privy to access to information, the

person just turning the thing off.

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Hasn't got, but they might be able to lend

that kind of political capital to stuff.

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I've seen the anti-pain where people go,

we are all in this room to decide, and

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if you don't decide, I'll decide for you.

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And the end result is no one

decides because they don't wanna

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be responsible because then it'll

ultimately go to the big box.

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Right?

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And then that drives

completely wrong behavior.

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So.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: I had some

very good examples early on in my

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career from project managers or

managers that did the Good King.

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I remember one project manager that came

to us and this was like a, like a, a.

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Banking industry where, where after the

crisis, where, you know, there was a

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project that they need all the information

to know that the bank is healthy,

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So then we had this project manager, I

remember vividly coming to us and he said,

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what do you think that is needed, right?

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Because the, COO thinks this and

this and we sat together as a team.

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This is what we need, this

is how we need to build it.

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So he asked us, he kept

asking question what we need?

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Okay, so this is what you need.

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Okay, I'm gonna arrange it.

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And then later that day he started

launching with the CEO and you

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saw him really influence as a CEO.

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And later on that day, he

came, okay, I arranged it.

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Let's go.

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I put full trust in you as a team, and

we were very successful because he put.

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That person enabled that

success to happen, right?

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They're saying, okay, this is a different

approach, but you're the expert.

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We hired us experts.

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And I think that's for any architect

in that role, that that's the shift

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in, so I've seen managers, you

can do, choose two sides, right?

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You can choose the side of the hierarchy

or you can choose the side of the team.

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Yep.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: my

main value based heuristic, I

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always put, value into the team.

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Yep.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: And that's hard.

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But yeah, being in a

leadership position is hard.

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So.

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Andrew Harmel-Law: the thing,

if you lose the team, right?

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Like maybe this time they, you know,

like your, in your example Angela, right?

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Maybe they go, okay, I'll just do it.

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And they go along with the decision,

but you are slowly losing that person's,

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Andrea Magnorsky: Oh no,

they're, they're gone.

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No, it's actually, in fact I think

it's kind of systematically designed

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so that people burn out after some

time and they leave and they can,

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there's enough time to replace them.

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Andrew Harmel-Law: So the people

who have been no longer, who

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don't have to live in this world.

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I mean, this is the thing, like what I

want, I dunno what it is I want to write

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about next, but like something about

the fact that we live in these codes,

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sociotechnical systems, that's not, we

don't pay enough attention to that, right?

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But it does.

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And we move in and outta it.

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We change companies, we change job

roles and we moved teams and stuff, and.

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Are big deals.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: We

don't pay enough attention to

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this systematic thing, right?

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There's this famous comic I share with

Evelyn Hin in our trainings that was

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like, okay, who wants, who has some ideas?

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And then someone says,

well, I think we know.

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Okay, more ideas.

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I think there's.

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No, that's shit.

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Come on.

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Keep sharing ideas.

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We're not aware of that systematic, so if

a person gets told like three times, no,

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of course they're not gonna share anymore,

or they're just gonna do what they want.

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I remember, people saying, yeah,

I'm just here to do my job and then

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I get back home, which is fine.

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But at least.

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Make it explicit how we're gonna do it.

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And I think consent is there.

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Good.

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How are we gonna work together, as well.

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I think that's the important

part is, okay, how much decision

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making power do you have?

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And this is what I talk a lot and we

tell in the book as well, I've been in

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this situation where, I was going to a

CTO and the CTO came in and sat me down.

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He says, Hey, you've been working for six

months now on this thing, and we're going

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to Azure, and I have this idea maybe,

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looking at the market, we should

move to Kotlin, for instance.

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I don't think that's a good idea

because everyone here does C and

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it's a whole different ecosystem

and yeah, we're gonna do it anyway.

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And I'm like, no, wait,

what happened here?

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You already took the decision

for yourself, and that's fine.

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You're in leadership position, but at

least tell me that you took the decision.

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Even though in your book, Henry, you

talk about decentralized decision and

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the advice process, you might not be in

that situation, but you can start writing

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ADRs and say, this is the agreement.

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This is how we are gonna take the, there's

several other options of taking decisions.

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And even though you don't follow

the advice process, you can

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at least make an a DR and say,

we're gonna follow this decision.

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Andrew Harmel-Law: 100%

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Andrea Magnorsky: I

have an add-on to that.

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what if that actually everything

is being documented, but

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listen to what I just said.

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Everything is being documented.

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So actually finding

something, finding coherence.

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It is, let's imagine that, not just that

it's being documented, but something else.

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It's kind of what if, the drs and other

similar documentation is being weaponized.

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I am adding to the, so how

would you decentralize there?

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'cause everyone's being

transparent enough.

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But that doesn't remove the

inherent problems this broken

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and hard place situation.

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So

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Hundred

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Andrea Magnorsky: actually

what do you do then?

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Andrew Harmel-Law: I've

got opinions on this.

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Andrea Magnorsky: Okay, I'm all ears.

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Andrew Harmel-Law: so before it became

popular, I quoted, 'cause I think you

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know this, the famous CIA, manual for like

disrupting, some people seem to think it's

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for disrupt, like it's for disrupting,

like, kind of, socialist bureaucracies

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and like communist bureaucracies, but

like the patterns they lay out is like

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just basically how to make everything

go really slowly or to like just confuse

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everything or just create loads of noise

and, and it's basically follow the rules

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to the letter and constantly complain

about things and write everything down

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and all these kind of things, right?

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So kind of.

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Take autonomy outta the people

and put them into the system and

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then you weaponize the system.

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Right?

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what I do to do that?

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'cause people do this, right?

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And people figure out, I mean

like I've done it, right?

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Like if I'm like, this decision is

implicit, so let's weaponize an a d

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but making it explicit so that we can

say, right, we know we don't agree,

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but here it is, it's written down.

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the other thing I use though, and

I need to write a blog post about

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this, 'cause this isn't in the book.

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If you do the four key metrics for

decisions, you can see the broader systems

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like the, the flow of decision making.

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So in the four, four key

metrics of decision making would

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be the number of decisions.

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Per month or whatever time

it takes to make a decision.

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The number of, so instead of deployment

failures, it would be like decisions

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which are superseded, and then the, the,

the time to restore service would be

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the time it takes to come back, right?

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So then you would see how many

decisions where they're coming from.

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You could also look at like the

number of sources of decisions, right?

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How long it takes to go.

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So if it's very bureaucratic, they'll all

take ages and you'll see the same decision

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being revisited over and over again.

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And then you can step back and

go, this feels a little bit.

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Weird, right, that's, this feels

like it's being weaponized, or

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at least we're paralyzed even

if we're not weaponizing it.

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We're just, we're weaponizing

it against ourselves.

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'cause we're scared to

decide or something.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: I think you

can add that we use in the book,

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so you can actually do a sense

making where you ask people how

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ready are you to make the decision?

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Right?

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And then you can sense, we sense

make that, and we teach that.

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People just, just start that.

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Andrea Magnorsky: The quantitative

and the more qualitative,

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Yeah.

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Andrea Magnorsky: Way to kind

of actually, look at decisions.

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So that's a heuristic, Kenny,

since you're apparently today

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in a heuristic collecting mood.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: Yeah.

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Andrea Magnorsky: when you're doing

decisions, make sure to, check

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qualitatively and quantitatively

how your decisions are doing

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Andrew Harmel-Law: totally.

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Like Rebecca is also like,

you should add an extra thing.

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I don't think it comes from Rebecca,

but there's some studies on this.

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You should add an extra field

to your ADRs, which is how

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I feel making this decision.

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So again, things right,

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: Yeah,

that's the sense making.

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I usually do.

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How do you feel about it?

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Are you ready for the,

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Andrew Harmel-Law: frustrated.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: power.

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I did it in a previous training where

I just teach them this media meteor

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developers, me and Evelyn teach that.

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And their discussion was like, huh.

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Oh, interesting.

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And then the decision got much more

powerful and they were like, ah, this

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is one thing that I can do tomorrow.

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Right.

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So adding these sensemaking to it,

and Rebecca talks about it as well.

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Andrea Magnorsky: So there is

a few Rebeccas in the world.

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And can we qualify

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just

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler:

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock.

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Andrea Magnorsky: Other people in this,

in this area, but I figured it was her.

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But just.

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Kenny (Baas) Schwegler: Yeah.

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And people who, so that's

another heuristic start

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following Rebecca Wesbrook.

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Now, she's got some good content,

and she started the dd meme, right,

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with a responsibility driven design.

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She started, it's all Rebecca's

fault with the RDD, but,

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thanks again for this episode.

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So this was the last episode

with the three of us.

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Next time we're gonna invite other

people to come up with stories,

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so, we have a whole list already

that we talked about in these last

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episodes that we're gonna invite.

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So I hope, everyone enjoyed again,

watching this, reading this,

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listening to this, whatever.

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Alright, we're trying to bring

the content the way you like it.

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If you like it, please follow us on the

podcast or on the YouTube and, give us

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feedback, join our Discord community.

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So you can go to virtual dd.com

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and there's a big button that you

can join the Discord community and

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you can keep the conversation alive.

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Hope to see you there.

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And if you have a story to

tell, come there as well.

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Start chatting with us and, we

can invite you to one of the.

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Other episode.

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Thanks, Andrea.

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Thanks Andrew, and see you next time.

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Bye.