Disagree and Commit

Technical disagreements that stay unresolved are more damaging than either outcome. They surface as half-hearted implementation, as relitigation at every subsequent meeting, and as an "I told you so" available for the first difficulty.

The convention has two obligations, and both matter.

Disagree properly first. State the objection clearly, once, with reasoning and — where possible — the evidence that would settle it. An objection withheld and raised later is worse than one raised loudly at the time.

Then commit fully. Once the decision is made by whoever has the authority to make it, support it in implementation and in front of others. Partial commitment is the failure mode this exists to prevent.

What makes it legitimate rather than a device for silencing people: the objection is recorded — in the decision record, with the reasoning — so it is visible, revisitable, and vindicated if events prove it right. A convention that requires people to drop objections without record is not this.

Two things that resolve disagreements better than debate: converting the disagreement into a testable question and running a spike, since evidence settles what argument cannot; and identifying whether the dispute is actually about values rather than facts — a disagreement about how much to weight cost against reliability is not resolvable by more analysis and needs the person who owns that trade-off.