Organizations are impacted on a daily basis by decisions made by people at every level. Even the most minute seeming tactical decisions can have an impact on the overall organization. Successful organizations realize this and look for ways to align the decision making at all parts of the organization so that the people who are in the best position with the most up to date information are making decisions. This is usually the people who are closest to the immediate impact of the decision. Blocks put in place by politics and corporate culture means that those higher up in any hierarchy are inherently less well informed than those next to the action.
While this type of distributed decision making is ideal for many reasons, organizational leaders still look for some way to align decisions so that the people making those decisions apply the information they have available to them in a way beneficial to the organization and consistent with it’s chosen direction. The balancing act becomes providing enough guidance to those making decisions while not restricting their ability to use the information available to them that those higher up in the organization may not be familiar with.
What are decision filters?
Niel Nickolaisen came up with the idea of decision filters and describes them in this interview with InformIT (http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1393062) :
Every day, people throughout the organization, especially those closest to the edges of the organization- the market and customer needs, need to make decisions. A filter gives those people a way to check if their ideas are in line with the direction of the corporation.Will this help us differentiate us in the marketplace? Or, will this be something that we need to do well but not better than anyone else? That is the value of defining the decision filters and then communicating them throughout the organization.
To state it simply, (as Niel put it) “decision filters help teams do the smart stuff better and stop doing stupid stuff.” (Presentation at Agile Leadership Summit – Better Software East 2012)
Decision filters are based on strategic direction or objectives and provide a simple communication of intent to guide decisions in a distributed fashion. Decision filters are questions that can be answered yes or no such as these two that Niel uses at his current organization, an online university, to determine whether they should do a given activity and if so, how they approach those activities:
1) Does this promote personalized learning?2) Does this promote competency based learning?
In this case, if the activities meet both of these filters, the organization treats these with innovativeness and creativity. If the activities do not meet those filters, then the decision becomes whether to do the activities at all, and if so to do them in a simple manner, mimicking approaches by other organizations.
In the interview from InformIT quoted above, Todd Little describes some key aspects to decision filters and explains how he used them at Landmark Graphics:
The key with decision filters is that they need to be actionable and they really need to be filters. If the filter is nebulous, such as “make great software,” it won’t be very effective. Another aspect that is key to an effective filter is that everyone needs to know what it is and what it means. At Landmark Graphics we set out the vision that we were going to be differentiating by providing improved integration across our software line. We made sure that everyone knew the importance of integration, and then we recognized that to integrate the software we needed to do a better job of integrating the people and the teams. Then, we invested in bringing people face to face and in reiterating the importance of integration. These actions demonstrated the commitment and investment and there was very strong buy in. The teams delivered remarkable results and the result was substantial market growth.
How Decision Filters work
Identify a few questions that encapsulate what you are trying to accomplish with your organization, product. project, release, or iteration. When you are trying to decide what you are going to do, or how you are going to do it, you use the decision filters to guide the decision about what to do, and how to approach those things you do. Having useful decision filters therefore comes down to how you create the filters and how you use them to make decisions.
The decision filter technique can be used for a variety of different purposes, often closely aligned with different levels of planning. They tend to be restatements of other key ideas such as objectives, conditions of satisfaction, or key success criteria depending on what type of decision they are trying to guide. Regardless of purpose and type of decision, they are usually are created the same way – through conversations. The conversations usually include the people that are providing the objectives, conditions of satisfaction, or key success criteria and some of the people that have to enact the decisions. The ratio of people providing the filters to those using them switches as you move from more strategic to more tactical. The conversations that occur when you are trying to come up with the filters can provide a great deal of background information for the delivery teams, but the truth is that eventually there will be people that need to use the decision filters that were not able to be involved in the discussion it is for these folks that the decision filters are really being created to help guide their decisions on a day to day basis. I’ll describe that more in future posts about the different kinds of decision filters.
The conversations usually proceed through a process of generating a large number of potential decision filters (divergence) followed by converging to 2 – 3 decision filters. You are better off with fewer decision filters, because the filters are additive, meaning in order for something to be done, it has to pass through all of the decision filters. The more filters you have, the fewer things get through. The discussions you have to narrow down to these 2 – 3 key ideas can be very enlightening and help a team establish a clear idea of what you want to deliver. It’s easy to identify a long laundry list of things you want to work on, but narrowing the list down to those 2 to 3 critical factors really helps a team focus.
Once you have created the decision filters you need to make sure that you are communicating them correctly to the teams that need to use them. How you communicate these decision filters is especially important if some or all of the people who need to use the decision filters were not included in the creation conversation. In that case, it is often helpful to introduce the decision filters and the highlights of the creation conversation to provide a bit of background for the team. The best way to see if the team understands the decision filters is have them use the decision filters to make an actual decision and see if they apply it correctly. This a much better way of ensuring understanding because the team may not always think of missing information until they are using the decision filters for a specific purpose.
When the team understands the decision filters, you need to make sure they are used consistently. I like to post decision filters on the wall (either physically or virtually) where the team can refer to them on a regular basis. This is helpful when the team is struggling with making a decision or when a discussion appears that seems to be going on a bit longer than it should, the someone on the team can point to the decision filter on the wall and say “is this helping us get to that?” I have used that technique for workshops, software development teams, and teams working on a transition and in all cases have found it great way to refocus the team.
Since I wrote this post, I completed my book Beyond Requirements, which included a set of technique briefs. Below is the decision filter technique brief from Beyond Requirements.
What It Is
Decision filters are simple questions used to guide decision making. They provide a quick way to communicate goals and objectives to everyone involved in realizing those goals and objectives. To put it in the words of Niel Nickolaisen, who originally created the concept: “Decision filters help teams do the smart stuff better and stop doing stupid stuff.” In effect, they tell you when to say no to a project that does not truly align with strategy.
An Example
The project-level decision filter for the conference submission system is “Will this help us have a community-based submission process?”
The decision filter for our first release of the conference submission system was “Will this help us receive submissions and provide reviews?”
When to Use It
Decision filters can be used for:
- Ensuring strategic alignment
- Aligning key product features
- Aligning key project objectives
- Aligning release goals
- Aligning iteration goals
- Determining the design approach (to determine if an activity is differentiating)
Why Use It
Decision filters make the goals and objectives of an organization very clear and accessible and are a quick way to check whether the team’s current actions are aligned with those goals and objectives.
Every day, organizations are impacted by decisions made by people at every level. Even seemingly minute tactical decisions can impact the overall organization. Successful organizations realize this and look for ways to align decision making in all parts of the organization so the people who are in the best position with the most up-to-date information are making decisions. These are usually the people who are closest to the immediate impact of the decision. Blocks put in place by politics and corporate culture mean that those higher up are inherently less well informed than those next to the action.
While this type of distributed decision making is ideal for many reasons, organization leaders still look for some way to align decisions so that the people making those decisions apply the available information in a way that is beneficial to the organization and consistent with its chosen direction. The balancing act becomes providing enough guidance to decision makers without restricting their ability to use the information available as a result of their direct work with the project.
How to Use It
1. Create the decision filters through conversations among key stakeholders. Decision filters are usually derived from goals and objectives.
Identify a few questions that encapsulate what you are trying to accomplish with your organization, product, project, release, or iteration. Use those decision filters to guide choices about what to do and how to approach it. Having useful decision filters therefore comes down to how you create the filters and how you use them to make decisions.
The decision filter technique can be used for a variety of purposes, often closely aligned with different levels of planning. Depending on the type of decision you’re trying to guide, decision filters may be restatements of other key ideas such as objectives, conditions of satisfaction, or key success criteria. Regardless, decision filters are usually created the same way—through conversations.
Decision filter conversations usually include all of the people who provide the filters (the objectives, conditions of satisfaction, or key success criteria) and some of the people who have to enact the decisions. For more tactical decisions, the conversations will include more people who have to enact the decisions. These conversations can provide a great deal of background information for teams, but eventually people who weren’t involved in these discussions will need to use the resulting decision filters. It is for those folks that the decision filters are really being created, to help guide their decisions on a day-to-day basis.
Decision filter conversations usually start with generating a large number of potential filters (divergence) and then converging on two or three.
2. Communicate the decision filters to the teams responsible for realizing those goals and objectives.
How you communicate the decision filters is especially important if some or all of the people who need to use them were not included in the initial conversations. In that case, it is often helpful to include highlights of the creation conversations, to provide a bit of background for the team.
The best way to see if the team understands the decision filters is to have them use the decision filters to make an actual decision and see if they apply them correctly. The team may not recognize missing information until they are using the decision filters for a specific purpose.
3. Use the decision filters in those teams to determine what they will and will not deliver.
Decision filters are extremely helpful in backlog refinement and prioritization discussions. Once the team understands the decision filters, you need to make sure they are used consistently. I like to post decision filters (either physically on the wall or virtually on a team website) where the team can refer to them on a regular basis. When the team is struggling with a decision or when a discussion appears that seems to be going on a bit longer than it should, someone on the team can point to the decision filter on the wall and ask, “Is this helping us get to that?” I have used that technique for workshops, software development teams, and teams working on a transition, and in all cases I have found it to be a great way to refocus the team.
Caveats and Considerations
Strive for just a few decision filters; two or three is ideal. The more filters you have, the fewer things will satisfy all of the filters, and the greater the likelihood that they will be in conflict. The discussions you have to narrow down to these two or three key ideas can be very enlightening and can help a team establish a clear idea of what to deliver. It’s easy to identify a long laundry list of things you want to work on, but narrowing the list down to those few critical factors really helps a team focus.
Avoid conflicting decision filters. This applies to goals and objectives as well. It may seem like common sense, but unless a team explicitly looks at their goals in entirety and establishes their goals as more than a check-the-box activity at the beginning of an initiative, it can be very easy for a project to have conflicting goals. This makes it difficult for a team to determine what to focus on, or it can lead to deliveries that end up conflicting with each other, resulting in a solution that does not appear to work.
It may be helpful to prioritize decision filters, especially when discussing them at the release level.
Decision filters need to be actionable, and they really need to be filters. If the filter is nebulous, such as “Make great software,” it won’t be very effective.
Additional Resources
An Interview with the Authors of Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility. by Amr Elssamadisy on InfoQ.
Beyond Requirements: Analysis with An Agile Mindset by Kent McDonald
Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility by Pollyanna Pixton, Niel Nickolaisen, Todd Little, and Kent McDonald
Analysis Techniques for Product Owners Live Lessons by Kent McDonald
The Art of Strategy is About Knowing When to Say No by Brian Halligan. Here is an example of how an organization applied decision filters without necessarily calling them that.
Want to know more?
If you learn better with video rather than reading, you may want to check out Analysis Techniques for Product Owners Live Lessons, a set of video training sessions that show you how to apply analysis techniques to product ownership. Lesson 4.1 focuses on decision filters.
Analysis Techniques for Product Owners is available on Safari – O’Reilly’s online learning platform. Sign up for a 10-day free trial to view the video lessons.