Handling Disagreement
Arguing from consequences, and escalating in the room.
5 to work through
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advanced
A senior engineer strongly opposes your architectural decision. You have decided anyway. How do you handle it?
2 min answer -
advanced
A senior stakeholder insists on an approach you believe is wrong. How should this be handled so the organisation reaches a good outcome regardless of who is right?
2 min answer -
advanced
On 1 August 2012 Knight Capital's trading system sent millions of erroneous orders and lost about $440M in 45 minutes. Automated warnings had been emailed before the market opened and were not treated as critical. What is the communication failure here, and what mechanism fixes it?
2 min answer -
advanced
Two senior engineers disagree strongly about an architectural approach, and the debate has stalled for weeks. How should an architect resolve it?
2 min answer -
advanced
Two senior engineers disagree strongly about an architectural direction and the team is stalled. How should an architect resolve it?
2 min answer
3 terms in this topic
Disagree and Commit
Recording a dissent with its reasoning and a monitorable revisit trigger, then executing the chosen approach wholeheartedly - which preserves both th…
practiceHandling Architectural Disagreement
Resolving a technical dispute in a way that produces a decision people will actually implement, rather than a winner.
practiceStop Authority
A named role's pre-agreed right to halt a running system alone, without consensus on the cause, so that a loss accumulating per minute is stopped bef…
Neighbouring topics
Architecture Communication
General material on communicating architecture.
Architecture Diagrams
Choosing an audience and refusing to mix levels of abstraction.
C4 Model
Context, container, component and code as four separate diagrams.
Context Diagrams
The system as one box, with its users and external systems.
Sequence Diagrams
Ordered message exchange, and walking the failure of each arrow.
Data-Flow Diagrams
Following the data across trust boundaries rather than the calls.
Deployment Diagrams
What runs where, in which zone, behind which boundary.
Communicating Threat Models
Making risk legible to people who will fund or accept it.
Writing Decision Records
Context, alternatives and consequences, written once and never edited.
Technical Proposals
A written argument circulated before the decision feels made.
Architecture Reviews
Reviewing early enough to influence rather than to veto.
Presenting to Executives
Decision first, cost, risk, and what happens if we do nothing.
Presenting to Engineers
Mechanism, alternatives rejected, and what you are unsure about.
Explaining Trade-offs
Naming what was given up, and the condition that would change it.
Negotiation
Trading on interests rather than positions, with priced options.
Documentation Practice
Keeping documents close to the code and honest about staleness.
Presentation Skills
Structure, pacing and the slide that carries the decision.
Written Communication
Writing that survives being read without you in the room.
Facilitation
Running a design session that reaches a decision.