{"id":11963,"date":"2016-01-19T08:37:27","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T14:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/?p=11963"},"modified":"2020-02-03T08:41:16","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T14:41:16","slug":"using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Guardrails to Guide Decision Making"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11964\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails.jpg 2000w, https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails-768x461.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails-1024x614.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails-750x450.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Guardrails are designed to keep people from unintentionally straying into dangerous territory. They are usually placed in the trickiest areas, where it is easy to take a wrong turn. Just as guardrails along the roadway keep drivers safer, decision\u2013making guardrails can protect businesses from taking unnecessary risks.<\/p>\n<p>Our\u00a0concept of guardrails for knowledge work was born at a leadership offsite for Planview AgilePlace\u2019s executives. We were discussing how we could provide our employees with the independence they needed to make business decisions, while ensuring that their efforts were aligned with our business needs.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-6910\"><\/span>The bulk of business opportunities lie in the daily decisions of individual contributors (IC). When control is centralized, ICs have to constantly ask permission for their decisions, resulting in a system that is tightly coupled and highly inefficient. However, when management provides their ICs with the tools they need to safely make independent decisions, the organization can simultaneously reduce risk and speed up value delivery.<\/p>\n<p>Netflix has proven this to be effective; their well-documented \u201c<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@awspyker\/managing-with-context-not-control-2a5643386ecd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">context, not control<\/a>\u201d mentality helps them establish guardrails \u2014 guiding their employees toward good practices, while allowing them the freedom to make decisions that support business goals.<\/p>\n<h3>Guardrails, Freedom and Responsibility at Netflix<\/h3>\n<p>Netflix\u2019s management relies on decision\u2013making guardrails (although they don\u2019t call them that) to help their engineers safely make smart decisions. For services running in production, the Cloud Services Team guidelines include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don\u2019t modify a server once deployed \u2014 recreate it from scratch with a new instance (immutable server pattern)<\/li>\n<li>Register every service in the service discovery system<\/li>\n<li>Route traffic between server instances for fast rollback capability<\/li>\n<li>Maintain a minimum of three instances of every service running in production for reliability<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Netflix Build &amp; Developer Tools Manager,\u00a0Mike McGarr, says additional decision guidelines exist, but outside of them, engineers are free to make decisions based on their goal of solving a business problem. He explained their method in\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3hULyTAESBE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-ol-has-click-handler=\"\">his talk<\/a>\u00a0at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in October: \u201cManagers focus on the \u2018what\u2019; engineers focus on the \u2018how\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This freedom comes with responsibility for solving issues resulting from poor decisions. Problems across the company are managed with context, not authoritative control. Managers share business context with their teams and give their people the freedom to decide how to solve each business problem.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to decision-making guidelines, Netflix also uses tools that help employees self\u2013correct. McGarr provides an example of Netflix\u2019s use of their\u00a0Conformity Monkey\u00a0tool, which automatically sends compliance feedback so engineers can self\u2013correct any work results that may have veered outside of the guardrails (without involving management).<\/p>\n<h3>Establishing Boundaries for Better Decision Making<\/h3>\n<p>Guardrails help smart people make high\u2013quality decisions faster and with less risk. Companies see greater alignment across the organization when they provide employees with context for understanding business needs, guardrails for decision\u2013making support and responsibility for the decisions they freely make.<\/p>\n<p>Guardrails can help all employees identify and avoid danger zones. In some organizations, a simple boundary such as, \u201cAnything past this point might have others questioning your judgement,\u201d might be a good place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guardrails are designed to keep people from unintentionally straying into dangerous territory. They are usually placed in the trickiest areas, where it is easy to take a wrong turn. Just as guardrails along the roadway keep drivers safer, decision\u2013making guardrails can protect businesses from taking unnecessary risks. Our\u00a0concept of guardrails for knowledge work was born&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[521],"tags":[511],"class_list":["post-11963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lean-agile","tag-leankit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Using Guardrails to Guide Decision Making - Blog | Planview<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our\u00a0concept of guardrails for knowledge work was born at a leadership offsite for LeanKit\u2019s executives.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Using Guardrails to Guide Decision Making\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our\u00a0concept of guardrails for knowledge work was born at a leadership offsite for LeanKit\u2019s executives.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Planview Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Planview-Inc\/89422974772\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-19T14:37:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-02-03T14:41:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dominica Degrandis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Planview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Planview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dominica Degrandis\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dominica Degrandis\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/eb07f960fc49f0f339a2d9fc1090e875\"},\"headline\":\"Using Guardrails to Guide Decision Making\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-19T14:37:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-02-03T14:41:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":525,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2020\\\/02\\\/LK_blogPhoto_guardrails.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"LeanKit\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Enterprise Agile Planning\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blog.planview.com\\\/using-guardrails-to-guide-decision-making\\\/\",\"name\":\"Using Guardrails to Guide Decision Making - 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