Ever spent an hour debating with your PM if the banner should say “sign up now” or “create an account toady?” It’s probably because you both cared so much about making the right decision – a good thing, until you realise you’ve wasted 2 hours for something that probably doesn’t matter that much.
⌚ Timebox your decisions.
If it looks like you’re about to enter this kind of territory, it’s time to introduce a time limit for the debate. When time’s up (20-30 minutes will probably suffice), somebody makes a call. Two ways I’ve determined who gets to decide before:
Whoever is the designated “owner” of the area – eg. if it’s a design decision, the designer makes the call.
Whoever cares more.
One of my old tech leads and I called this our “die on the hill” rule – one of us would back down after 20 minutes of debate.
This one only really works if you have a great working relationship and also have blurry enough responsibilities that either of you can make the call.
If you’re in a group, you can also nominate someone else to make the call after hearing both cases.
Either way, make a decision and move on. If you’re building software, most things can be changed later anyway.
NB: if you’re debating a one-way door, then you should definitely spend more than 20 minutes! Timeboxing like this is good for lower-level, two-way decisions.
🤷♀ Why timebox?
Aside from just saving time as a team, this method is important for preserving your relationships. Being right isn’t always what’s best for the team; sometimes you need to take the loss so that you can move on together.
And if you’re using the die-on-the-hill method, I find this actually helps to calibrate how much you actually care about the issue you’re discussing. I would sometimes back down early after realising it wasn’t really important to me after all.
💡 Applying the timebox method
There are 2 ways you can apply this method – in the moment, or establishing an agreement with your team. They’re not mutually exclusive, so you can use both if that works for you!
In the moment
If you noticed you’re going in circles, mention it and propose a timebox for the decision, as well as who will ultimately decide at the end – the subject matter expert, the person who cares more, or someone else in the room.
The ways-of-working agreement
If you find yourself in this situation often with the same people, and you have a good working relationship, you might want to try bringing it up as something you implement.
I found this really useful with my tech lead, because having that conversation upfront built a bit of trust, and it also gave both of us permission to call the timebox without having to justify it.
Timeboxing a decision doesn’t mean it has to be set in stone. If you’re invested enough in the outcome, make a note to come back and see how it performed. Many copy debates I had with my PM were resolved by agreeing on options to A/B test, and then making a final call after we had hard data!
