Projects grind to a halt when no one is willing to take charge and make decisions. However, making headway is just as hard when multiple people believe they are the primary decision-maker. Their decisions are often misaligned. This creates conflicts, slows progress, and results in products that are delayed, incomplete, and ineffective. Even when project leaders get along well and communicate effectively with each other, ordinary misunderstandings make the lack of a primary decision-maker corrosive.
Your project needs one owner—one person with primary responsibility. Who chooses that owner? How do you placate other stakeholders and best utilize their talents? What approach leads to fast, informed, and balanced decisions that stick? Great questions. Let’s move forward together.
For more on filling a leadership void, read Who’s in charge here?
Need a better model
There are many times when multiple people share power on a project. Often, projects require the work of multiple teams, each with their own leaders. Often, projects have different aspects that each have different owners (e.g., product design, engineering design). Keeping work on these projects aligned and productive is essential for delivering high quality on time. You need a model for shared decision-making that’s quick, robust, and aligns all stakeholders.
Fortunately, many such shared decision-making models exist with lots of exciting acronyms: RACI, RASIC, DACI, PACSI, OARPI, CAIRO, RAPID, PDQA (and more on Wikipedia). Before you get too carried away with the different acronyms and how you pronounce them, know that there are only three roles essential for making fast, informed, and balanced decisions that stick.
- Owner, also known as responsible, primary, driver, performer, or recommender. This person owns the decision-making process and makes the final decision, unless overridden by upper management (the “approver”).
- Approver, also known as accountable, agree, or authority. This person, typically from upper management, chooses the owner and can override the owner’s decisions, particularly if key stakeholders (the “reviewers”) object to those decisions.
- Reviewers, also known as consulted, council, or control. These people, typically key stakeholders, can object to an owner’s decision, forcing the approver to resolve the dispute.
There are other roles that help ensure decisions get made and implemented well: participants, facilitators, informed, contributors, and quality assurance. However, the owner, approver, and reviewers are the ones who dictate the decision and make it stick.
Eric Aside
For more on the evils of matrix management, read Escape the matrix.
Who should I give this job to?
The owner loses authority if the approver frequently overrides their decisions. People stop believing in the owner, including the annoyed approver who may choose to assign a different owner.
Thus, the owner has a strong incentive to consult with reviewers and ensure their objections are resolved in advance. This makes the reviewer role attractive. Reviewers get to have control over decisions without dealing with all the work and responsibility. The owner role is more difficult but is still desirable for visibility, scope, and decision-making authority.
Since there are many different areas to own on a big project, key stakeholders can spread ownership among themselves (or their delegates) based on who wants or cares most about each area. These stakeholders aren’t concerned about losing control because they will all be reviewers. If the approver has a strong preference or the stakeholders can’t decide on an owner, the approver can choose the owner. Each owner chooses a backup, typically from among the reviewers, for when the owner is sick or away.
Eric Aside
For more on assigning ownership, read Effective delegation: Assign ownership.
I strenuously object
Say an owner makes a decision without consulting reviewers or resolving their objections. Reviewers can raise their objections to the approver. Approvers hate dealing with these disputes. They will be annoyed with the owner and the objecting reviewers. They will feel like a chaperone of children instead of a leader of professionals.
If the objection is reasonable, most of the approver’s ire will fall on the owner: “Why didn’t you consult with reviewers first, and if you did, why couldn’t you address this problem? Try again.” As a result, owners work hard to identify and address reviewer objections (even for lazy reviewers who ignore their inboxes).
If the objection is unreasonable, most of the approver’s ire will fall on the reviewer who objected: “What makes you think your needs trump everyone else’s? Reset your expectations and get back to work.” As a result, reviewers only raise objections to approvers when their concerns warrant it. This dynamic creates the proper balance between owners and reviewers and drives decisions that meet everyone’s needs.
Once the reviewers’ concerns are met sufficiently to avoid objection, reviewers are obligated to support the decision fully and genuinely. (Not supporting a decision would mean raising an objection.) When all stakeholders support a decision, that decision sticks.
Eric Aside
For more on negotiation and meeting needs, read My way or the highway—Negotiation.
Pull a fast one
In a crisis, owners need to make quick decisions. They lack time to consult with reviewers. Under these conditions, reviewers are expected to support the owner’s decision fully and genuinely, even if they have objections. If the owner isn’t around, their backup assumes control. If the backup isn’t around, any available reviewer can intervene. Once the crisis is over, the owner and reviewers can discuss what went wrong and decide how to fix the remaining issues so that the incident doesn’t recur.
If an owner takes advantage of this loophole to make quick decisions when there isn’t a crisis, reviewers can raise an objection to the approver. This provision prevents misuse of power and restores balance.
Eric Aside
For more on making a quick decision, read You have to make a decision and What’s this now? Dealing with ambiguity.
We know what we’re doing
When project leaders aren’t aligned, projects drift, work gets wasted, dates get missed, scenarios are incomplete, code resembles spaghetti, and customers receive lousy products. There’s a straightforward fix: Have a single owner for each project and each area. Key stakeholders of that project or area become its reviewers. Reviewers can raise objections to upper management approvers. Approvers hate dealing with objections and objectors, so owners work to identify and address reviewer concerns, and reviewers only push back when it really matters. Once objections are resolved, everyone aligns behind each decision, resulting in the efficient, on-time delivery of quality products.
Since reviewers retain sufficient control over projects to avoid serious issues, there’s no imperative for anyone to own everything. Instead, approvers can assign ownership to whoever is most willing and best suited to take it. In a crisis, owners can act quickly and decisively, knowing reviewers will align behind them, saving their feedback for later when there’s time to consult.
It’s such a nice system that you may wonder why more teams don’t use it. In this case, ignorance is far from bliss. Clarify who are the owners, approvers, and reviewers for your projects. Regain your bliss. Customers will thank you.
Want personalized coaching on this topic or any other challenge? Schedule a free, confidential call. I provide one-on-one career coaching with an emphasis on underrepresented, midcareer software professionals. Find out more at Ally for Onlys in Tech.
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