Estimations are useful in high level discussions about feasibility and underlying technical complexities (like, is this a week or a month, and why?), and also to be able to make trade-offs between quick wins and larger investments. But estimating down to the story point or man-hour is a huge waste of everyone’s time and sanity.

You can get to the real cause of an issue by asking why 5 times.

When a customer brings a complaint, there are always two tokens on the table: “It’s no big deal” and “It’s the end of the world”. Both tokens are always played, so whoever chooses first forces the other to grab the token that’s left. Don’t force your customer into taking the “It’s the end of the world” one. https://brunopedro.com/

In all cases, you should push decisions as far down your org chart as they can go. Consider how much pain and inefficiency you’re willing to take, in exchange for people feeling ownership over their goals and mission. I’d enjoy dictating exactly how our new dashboard should operate, but it’s in our organization’s best interest to let the dashboard team make those decisions. If I dictate their work, they’ll execute on it.

The best way to undercut a strategic initiative is to make it someone’s part-time job.

When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create.

The sooner you make someone feel responsible and confident that they can do something, the better. Then, you wait to see if they respond. Then you know you have chosen the right one.

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors.

If you can’t explain a solution, then you don’t really understand it.

8h per day for 3.5 years make you an expert 4h per day for 7 years make you an expert 1h per day for 28 years makes you an expert