Software design principles for teams: The Principle of Inclusivity.
Design decision making is not an aristocracy, where only the highly opinionated and outspoken are represented. These people will leave your team one day… what then?
Background
This is an elaboration of one of the principles I originally published in the following article…
Principle
Design decision making is not an aristocracy, where only the highly opinionated and outspoken are represented. These people will leave your team one day… what then?
There are multiple reasons for fostering a culture of inclusivity around decision making with delivery teams. The first of these reasons is best expressed from an unlikely source…
Thinking about inclusivity in design decisions always takes me to this quote from America’s Cup winning skipper John Bertrand about his opposing skipper, Dennis Connor. They sailed together prior to facing off against each other in the 1983 America’s Cup, and John had this to say about one aspect of Dennis’ leadership style in John’s book “Born to win”:
“He (Dennis) has a marvelous ability to involve everyone in every aspect of the race. He will suddenly shout questions to inappropriate people - he will ask the bow man… what he thinks of the shape of the mainsail… it makes everyone feel great, and Dennis was the first boat skipper to show me how effective his method is in producing tight team spirit.”
Beyond this sense of esprit de corps enabled by inclusivity, there are other more pragmatic justifications; risk mitigation, and people development.
Inclusivity as risk mitigation
The main risk you are trying to mitigate through inclusivity is having too few people willing and able to make decisions around design. The worst of all possible worlds is where only the tech lead makes decisions, either through necessity or expectation. This person might very well make very sound decisions, but this adds a massive bus factor risk for the team.
The less risky - but still problematic - variant of this risk is where a secondary leader1 within the team owns most/all of the decisions by default. This person is usually very comfortable making decisions, often quite confident of their own abilities, and are subsequently outspoken in design conversations. Often these people are close to assuming formal technical leadership roles themselves, or may have done so in the past. Again, their decision making skills might very well be sound, but the long term health of a team depends on everyone having a voice in these conversations.
For the tech lead of the team, if they are struggling to get engagement in design decisions by the team, it is less likely to be the fault of the individuals and more likely to be a lack of a safe and inclusive culture within the team: a culture you are largely responsible for creating and nurturing.
Inclusivity for people development
Inclusivity benefits both those who are currently feeling excluded from design conversations and those who are participating.
For those excluded, being an able participant in design decisions is a key step on a journey to more responsibility and a broader range of influence as you progress further into your career. However, there are no role- or experience-defined milestones that signpost the start of being involved in design decision making. You should not be thinking “I’ll participate when I get a senior role”. The earlier you can engage in these conversations, the better. You may not feel like you have much to say early on, and you may not have confidence in your opinions, but you should still express them. Depending on the culture of the team, you may not be able to wait to be asked for these opinions, rather you may need to build skills to inject your opinions into conversations, however uncomfortable this may feel at first.
For those included, the focus is simple: make yourself redundant by making space for those excluded.
For experienced leaders, there is no surer sign of success and feedback on their own abilities than the recognition that the team could run itself with no need for your input. This doesn’t mean you no longer have purpose, but it is the equivalent of parents recognizing that their kids are able to move out of home and fend for themselves. If young adults never reach that phase of their lives, it is often because their parents haven’t built the safe scaffolds to allow them to participate in the meatier aspects of life, while still in the safe cocoon of the family unit.
I’ve often seen this situation arise where a tech lead has so many outward-facing responsibilities requiring their attention that they are more than happy to delegate much of the decision making to a trusted 2IC.