EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 21Decisions

In the previous chapter, I discussed the importance of integrity and how it is the basis for decision making in an empowered product team. In this chapter, I'd like to focus on how I coach product teams in making good decisions.

Remember that in feature teams most of the meaningful decisions have been made upstream by executives and stakeholders. In contrast, an empowered product team is all about pushing decisions down to the product team level.

When I say, “good decisions,” I'm not just referring here to logical, data‐informed business decisions. I mean decisions that the rest of your product team, your executives, your stakeholders, and your customers can support and understand, even if they disagree.

You might wonder why we need to worry about all of these constituencies. You may think that if it's the right thing for the product and the customer, then this will all work out in the end. But this ignores the realities and complexities of people and companies, especially if you're striving for an empowered team of missionaries rather than mercenaries.

While making decisions is what empowered product teams do literally every day, how they make these decisions is often what separates the best from the rest.

First, we need to keep in mind that good decisions rest on a foundation of integrity—you are perceived as being dependable in your commitments, you are believed to be acting in the best interests of the company, and you're willing to be accountable to ...