Slow down to speed up your decision-making

In many software teams, decision-making is driven by habits, blindly following best practices, or the latest trends - rather than a clear understanding of the problem. Microservices are a perfect example. Teams often break systems into smaller services because it feels like the “right” approach and everyone else is doing it too. Before a single service is deployed, the architecture is already overcomplicated - not because of bad intentions, but because we never stopped to ask: what problem are we actually trying to solve?

Through real-world examples, we’ll discuss how to think critically about the way decisions are being made in your company. We’ll introduce concepts like participation theater—when people perform the rituals of decision-making without making real decisions—alongside problem restatement as a tool to uncover the real challenge at hand. We’ll also examine different types of decisions (reactive vs. proactive, reversible vs. irreversible) and why recognizing them early changes how you should approach them.

This talk is a call to slow down to speed up your decision-making. Whether you're an engineer, architect, or tech lead, this session will challenge you to pause before reaching for solutions and instead ask: *what problem am I really trying to solve?*

Transcript

1. Photo by Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash
2. WE USED TECHNOLOGY X ONCE AND IT WENT HORRIBLE WRONG. THAT IS WHY WE CAN’T USE IT IN THIS PROJECT. Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash
3. MY PREVIOUS PROJECT USED TECHNOLOGY X AND IT WENT GREAT. LET’S DO THE EXACT SAME THING! Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
4. SORRY / NOT SORRY Photo by Meg Jenson on Unsplash
5. SLOW DOWN TO SPEED UP YOUR DECISION-MAKING Photo by Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash
6. Gien Verschatse gien@aardling.eu
7. WE WANT TO MOVE TO MICROSERVICES Photo by Daniel K Cheung on Unsplash
8. BECAUSE WE WANT TO GET RID OF OUR MONOLITH
9. THIS ISN’T GOING TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
10. WHAT IS A DECISION? Six essential elements
11. A CHOICE BETWEEN TWO OR MORE ALTERNATIVES THAT INVOLVES AN IRREVOCABLE ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES. WHAT IS A DECISION?
12. AN ALTERNATIVE IS A PATH THAT WILL LEAD YOU DO A DIFFERENT FUTURE WHAT IS AN ALTERNATIVE?
13. THERE IS COST IN BEING WRONG IRREVOCABLE ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES
15. DECISION MAKER AUTHORITY COMMITMENT PERMISSION
16. FRAME VIEW OF THE DECISION MAKER
17. THE HARDEST PART IS FRAMING THE PROBLEM. IT IS ALSO THE PART WE SPEND THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME ON. Photo by Amir Hanna on Unsplash
18. A PROBLEM OR A POLARITY? Do we have Photo by Karla Hernandez on Unsplash
19. WHAT IS A POLARITY CAN’T BE SOLVED Photo by Alice Yamamura on Unsplash
21. WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A PROBLEM?
22. WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A PROBLEM?
23. MAKE IT IRRELEVANT
24. PHOENIX PROJECTS Photo by Nader Abushhab on Unsplash
25. Morgan D. Jones
27. PROBLEM STATEMENT WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
28. PITFALLS NO FOCUS How can we fix our bad architecture? FOCUS IS DRIVEN BY ASSUMPTION/SOLUTION How do we move to microservices? Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
29. HOW YOU STATE THE PROBLEM, WILL INFLUENCE THE OUTCOME Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash
30. PROBLEM RESTATEMENT: PARAPHRASE How can we convince people to do Domain-Driven Design? How can we make our team enthusiastic about Domain- Driven Design?
31. PROBLEM RESTATEMENT: REDIRECT FOCUS How can we fix our bad architecture? How can we increase the user experience?
32. PROBLEM RESTATEMENT: ASK ”WHY?” “We want to move to microservices” WHY? Because our monolith has turned into a Big Ball of Mud. “How can we reestablish the boundaries in our monolith?” WHY? Because we don’t understand our code anymore. “How can we regain the knowledge of our monolith?” WHY? …
33. J.W. Getzels T. Wedell-Wedellsborg
34. ALRIGHT, WE UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM BETTER NOW WHAT? Photo by Bruce Comber on Unsplash
35. INFORMATION Collaborative modelling to understand the business processes, the rules and policies, the user journey, workflows…
36. MANY TOOLS
37. IF HAVING CERTAIN INFORMATION DOESN'T CHANGE YOUR MIND, IT'S WORTHLESS INFORMATION
38. OPTIONS/ALTERNATIVES
39. DESIGNING ALTERNATIVES
40. ALTERNATIVES GENERATE MORE ALTERNATIVES
41. WHAT IS A HEURISTIC “A heuristic is anything that provides a plausible aid or direction in the solution of a problem but is in the final analysis unjustified, incapable of justification and fallible. It is anything that is used to guide, discover and reveal a possibly, but not necessarily, correct way to solve a problem.” Billy Vaughn Koen
42. WE WILL DO DECOMPOSITION
43. PREFERENCES You can use value-based heuristics for this.
44. LOGIC HEURISTICS OR ANALYSIS
45. TECHNOLOGY
46. RAZORS TO THE RESCUE OCCAM’s RAZOR If two competing models both have equal explanatory power, it’s more likely that the simple solution suffices. HANLON’s RAZOR Don't attribute something to malice when it can be more easily explained by stupidity. Photo by Mel Poole on Unsplash
47. ANALYSING
48. ANALYSING
49. WANT TO DIVE DEEPER?
50. LIMITED KNOWLEDGE LIMITED TIME HEURISTICS?
51. LIMITED KNOWLEDGE TIME ANALYSIS?
52. HOW MUCH TIME? DEPENDS ON THE DECISION
53. IRREVERSIBLE VS REVERSIBLE “one way or two way door?” Photo by Linford Miles on Unsplash
54. UNCERTAINTY Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash
55. CLAIRVOYANT HEURSTIC If I could ask a clairvoyant one question in order to feel confident make this decision, what question would it be? Photo by Gabriel Kraus on Unsplash
58. EASY OR HARD A DECISION CAN BE
59. REACTIVE OR PROACTIVE A DECISION CAN BE
61. GOOD OR BAD A DECISION CAN BE
62. GOOD OR BAD? Laura has a lot to drink but she decides to drive home anyway. 01 She loses control over her steering wheel, hit a tree and is injured. 02
63. GOOD OR BAD Laura has a lot to drink but she decides to drive home anyway. 01 She gets home safe without any accidents. 02
64. GOOD OR BAD? Laura doesn’t drink all evening, so she drives home herself. 01 She gets home safe without any accidents. 02
65. GOOD OR BAD? Laura doesn’t drink all evening, so she drives home herself. 01 She loses control over her steering wheel, hit a tree and is injured. 02
66. GOOD DECISION DOES NOT GUARANTEE A GOOD OUTCOME. WHICH ALSO MEANS… A BAD DECISION DOES NOT GUARANTEE A BAD OUTCOME.
67. A GOOD OR A BAD OUTCOME A DECISION HAS…
68. WHAT IS A GOOD DECISION The six elements Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
69. RESULTING *\0/*
70. SO WHY BOTHER?
71. CLARITY For everybody
72. CONSISTENCY
73. OVER TIME, YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF MAKING DECISIONS IN A SIMILAR WAY.
74. I GOT 99 PROBLEMS… AND NOW I CAN DEAL WITH THEM A BIT BETTER! Photo by Caleb Chen on Unsplash
75. Gien Verschatse Book a call with me: