Matrices outside math

Hello yet again! We are making decisions every second basically, reading this is one, whether you’ll drink water or tea is another, what clothes you are wearing, which side of the street to walk on, the list goes on and on. Some decisions have more impact than others, and that can be especially true when we are working, making clear how many people need to be involved in every decision, how free we are to take things on our own is very important, it gives us more responsibility and allows a better flow for our processes. This is why today I’ll be talking about the Team Decision Matrix.

To build this matrix you can use a premade template, or the cards sets from Management 3.0. Basically, on the columns side we have how many people needs to present or considered while making a decision (we even have an aleatory option!) and on the lines side we are meant to write the processes we will decide on. After they are in place, we can vote on each using a “decision poker”, much like a planning poker or any other method your team likes. After the voting is done, we are committed to following the Matrix and should always incentivize our team to do the same.

The first time I used the Team Decision Matrix was because the processes for code committing, making changes in our design and on the platforms, journeys were a bit messy (kind words from my team), so I called up a meeting, explained the idea and we started filling up the matrix. The second time was when my CTO and I took over the operations area, I decided to use it right after a team building sessions using Moving Motivators to ensure we could start with the right feet.

During my first facilitation with it I brought the processes side already filled up and asked the team if there were anything they felt was missing, then we did a “decision poker” using the vote dynamic in Miro, it all went smoothly. When we finished someone said we could have at least one thing we could decide using the aleatory option, we decided to create a “pizza ritual”, every two weeks we have a prize draw using dices or a virtual roulette, the winning person can order a pizza and we’ll repay the value later, its super fun! The second time we filled the processes side together, and decided there were a process we needed to start deciding with a consensus and, in the future, it could be decided by one person only, it’s the red line leading to another blue start, our “wish” to accomplish.

We had awesome results! The dev team began to run smoothly, with aligned processes decided together, it gave them a lot of motivation and ownership, we started to deliver with more quality and less stress, and the operations team started well, we don’t have any quarrels about our processes as a team! Sharing with your team the decision-making processes and empowering them to work with the system brigs excellent results, it also motivates them a lot, we should always do that, for the sake of the best for team and the company as well, considering the company is made by our teams. I believe its time to replay the Decision Matrix, and maybe create a backlog plan to improve our “wishes”.

#management30 #decisionmaking #management