Day 13: A Simple Framework To Validate Your Decisions In Tech

How often do you make and communicate a decision only for it to come back and bite you in the ass?

Did you rush into that decision? Did you miss anything?

We’re all bound to make bad decisions. One of the biggest evils I find in the Tech industry is the lack of decisions (especially the tough ones).

So here are 4 vectors you need to check to validate your decision:

1. Architecture

Usually, there are several solutions available to any problem.

Involving Architecture ensures that the solution you’ll implement is:

• aligned with the overall product architecture
• follows the best practices adopted at your company
• are you incurring technical debt?
• it’s a robust enough solution that will stand the test of time and scale.

2. Security

Choosing a compliant solution can drastically change the set of available options.

Validating your options by the Security team ensures that you have full confidence that your implementation won’t later on fail to meet compliance regulations.

Especially if your company holds certain certifications that will be key to the business.

This close alignment is important for those annoying but necessary audits you’ll have when you need to justify how things are implemented to the auditor.

3. Costs

Every solution costs money: VM hours, Storage, Team hours, etc.

Everything comes at a cost. Having this awareness is essential when making a decision.

A perfect solution at a heavy cost vs a good enough solution at a not-so-heavy cost. A build vs buy scenario. You’ll need to evaluate both options from a cost perspective.

Make sure you have cost data to support all the different options you have in your hand since sooner or later you’ll be questioned about it.

4. Timelines

Finally, understanding how long your team will take to implement the solution can be a deal breaker.

If you have a hard deadline, how long the solution takes to implement gains an unprecedented priority in the decision matrix.

Make sure that all defined dates are clear to everyone.

If you’re working in a startup you’ll probably work with a completely different mindset: speed is everything.

Being able to change, iterate and validate ideas with customers needs to be done as quickly as possible, even while incurring some clear long-term or compliance risks.

But even in a fast-paced environment, make sure you keep these questions in the back of your mind:

• Does this solution scale to the levels we need?
• Are we ignoring any security best practices?
• How will costs be affected when we scale this solution?
• Do we have the time to implement it properly or do we need to hit it Mjölnir? 🔨

❓ Do you agree? What vectors do you use when making a big decision within a Tech landscape?