Design It!

Delegate Design Authority

As we include more of the team in the design process, we must decide how much design authority to keep and how much to delegate. Our goal is to give away as much design authority as possible without putting essential quality attributes at risk or otherwise endangering the architecture. In Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders [App11], Jurgen Appelo describes seven levels of authority. We can use these levels to help us decide how much design authority to keep and what we can leave to the team.

Level 1: Tell

You make the design decision and tell the team what will happen, usually by producing an artifact.

Level 2: Sell

You make the design decision and show the team why it is the right call. ...