What autonomy needs
What autonomy needs
The four facts that turn permission into something a person can act on, and what each one costs when it is missing.
Decisions this page is about, and where the line actually was
Picking the library for the new parser
1 → 4The architect had a standing view
Dropping a requirement nobody had asked about in six weeks
2 → 5A commitment made before you joined
Changing a database column type
1 → 1Small, reversible, tested once before
- 1Decide it alone and say nothing
- 2Decide it alone and mention it afterwards
- 3Check with one colleague first
- 4Check with the person who assigned it
- 5Needs a decision one level up
- 6Cannot be decided here at all
three decisions · not one of them gave you more room than you thought · two gave you less · one you had exactly right · the median gap was three steps on the scale
Three of the nine decisions counted on this site.
Autonomy is permission, not instruction
Being told to decide for yourself is not the same as being able to. The permission is free to give; the context that makes it usable is what costs something.
The four things a handover needs
The constraint, what was tried before, who can say no, and why it is wanted. Each takes a minute to state and a quarter to guess at.
What a constraint actually is
Not a preference and not a deadline somebody would like. A constraint is a fact about the world that the work must fit, and it has an owner and a reason.
The precedent nobody passes on
Somebody tried this before and it stopped. The reason it stopped is the single cheapest thing to hand over and the most reliably lost.
Who can say no, and when
The late veto is the most expensive failure in a handover, and it comes from one unsaid sentence: the name of the person with a standing view.
Why it is wanted, and who wants it
The purpose governs every trade-off the receiver makes alone. The stated reason and the real one are often different, and only the real one predicts anything.
Freedom without a brief is a test
When all four things are missing, the receiver stops experiencing autonomy and starts experiencing an exam with unstated marking criteria.
What good autonomy feels like
The one complete handover of the quarter, described from the inside, and the specific things it made possible that the other seven did not.