Shared context improves decisions

Description

A shared understanding of a common collective valuable purpose improves collaboration, decision-making and motivation.

Ensure that all those involved in the value stream are informed and invested in the end-to-end purpose at an appropriate level of detail to provide context for decision-making. Appropriate, in this context, means that the individuals or groups understand both the higher level collective mission and the specific level of detail to usefully contribute to decomposed elements of work that align with the collective purpose. This should be true for those contributing to developing the product and those providing feedback on the work outcomes.

Rationale

A key element of successful empowerment and motivation is a compelling direction. It also creates an essential "Binding" pressure, converting a group of people into a team(s) with a shared mission. At scale, this is even more vital to prevent locally optimised decisions and team tribal behaviour that can result in them actively competing and working against each other. Diverse opinions are a fundamental component of good design. Having a clear shared target outcome enables constructive discussion about how to implement a solution and avoids disjointed and emotional arguments trying to solve different problems.

Shared context must exist at multiple levels of detail. At a high level, to align multiple teams and stakeholders to an overall mission that they will need to collaborate across. At a more detailed level, to align a team to collaborate and make local decisions that are aligned with the overall mission. This will require practices to envision, shape, decompose, communicate and refresh the appropriate levels of purpose with all stakeholders in the value stream in an ongoing process - see Aligned Autonomy in the Leadership Perspective.

Related Principles

• Organise around value streams
• Maximise engagement
• Create clarity of purpose
• Maximise team empowerment and localised decision making
• Support autonomy with clear boundaries
• Favour Teams with broader Business Domain Accountability
• Organise around value streams
• Use the Definition of Done as an enabling constraint
• Product solution design is driven from within development teams
• Outcome is the primary measure of success
• End-to-End Product
• Architectural cohesion
• Avoid Components
• Align towards business synergies