Comments for The Daily Standup

Comment on Do unmade decisions cause you stress? by Peter Edstrom

Peter Edstrom — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:55:58 +0000

I think the stress depends on the type of unmade decision. Things like emails in your inbox … absolutely cause low-grade stress. Things like framework decisions … not as much.

With email, you have all available information needed to delete/delegate/respond/defer or do. And by not choosing one, the stress starts. YOU are the only one that can make the call, and you aren’t. With things like a framework decision (or any other project-related decision) there might be some stress, but I think it is easier to not own the stress. IE, _we_ have not decided on a framework yet; the _business_ hasn’t gotten the requirements to us yet; etc. It simply isn’t time yet to make the call. OTOH, you might have a manager that isn’t keen on waiting, in which case there is stress (YOU don’t have the requirements, because YOU didn’t follow up with the business; etc.) Though I would put the source of that stress on the manager – not on the principle of deferring the decision to the last moment.

Comment on Do unmade decisions cause you stress? by Ed

Ed — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:26:24 +0000

Thanks Kourosh. I agree, having a waiting for task is very helpful when someone says “I’ll get back to you.” One practice that has helped me is adding the date when I will follow up with them in the text of my “waiting for” task, in case they forget to get back. Then I’ll catch this in my weekly review (assuming I’m not slacking on that. ^_^)

Comment on Do unmade decisions cause you stress? by Kourosh

Kourosh — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:31:26 +0000

I think you’re spot on in terms of the tickler as being useful to trigger when you need to make a decision. Another scenario though would be that you are waiting for additional information. In this case you could consider a “waiting for …” context to defer until that information is received.

Comment on David Anderson Speaks at Bay Area APLN by César

César — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:14:49 +0000

It’s great to know that you enjoyed the event. I could also relate to his story about “giving the team permission to write zero-bug code”.

Afterwards I had a conversation with David and we covered a similar theme to what you share on this post. It’s powerful to give that permission but it often has to come accompanied by a recognition (and removal) of fundamental blocks.

Such “iron triangles” as you put it must be identified and resolved. This is often non-trivial because they can be caused by enterprise-wide policies or constraints. Worse still, you may be the only one who can see them as the problem they really are and it takes a while for others to come around…

César.