A user asks a question that needs a decision. Eleven weeks later the answer arrives, and it no longer matters.
When somebody raises something that needs deciding — a field that cannot be answered, an exception with no route, a rule that contradicts a policy — the elapsed time until an answer is a direct predictor of whether the system will be worked around.
People do not stop working while a decision is pending. They find a way through, and the way through establishes itself.
Two weeks is usually recoverable.
Eight weeks is not, because by then the workaround is the process, has been taught to two new starters, and has a spreadsheet attached to it.
What destroys confidence is not slowness. A commitment that unanswered questions receive a decision within ten working days, kept, is worth more than a commitment to respond immediately, broken. It is not knowing whether an answer is coming at all.
Every permanent shadow system in an organisation started as a temporary answer to a question nobody got round to settling.
Decision latency is treated as an acceptance risk in chapter 9 of Built to Be Used.
#ITgovernance #ProjectManagement #DecisionMaking
This article accompanies the book Built to Be Used.