Reviewing our Work

Moving ideas is heavy work. Good reviews make it lighter.

We execute better when we think through our problems. A good review practice helps us do this.

Forward responded to COVID19 with a triage flow, and an improved tele-medical experience. We learned a lot from both. Our successful changes happened when we launched ideas sharpened by small teams. Our failures usually involved a lack of the same.

We’ve seen this pattern before. Teams trying to solve a problem deal with change. Managing this change requires focused discourse. This is where a team review practice comes in. It turns the best ideas into effective ones. It stresses weak ideas before they become expensive mistakes.

I see reviews through the following lenses:

• The Proposal. A framing of the problem and approach for feedback.
• The Audience. Relevant teammates who provide feedback.
• The Review. The mechanics of using feedback to improve the proposal.
• Alignment. A state of commitment from the team.

The Proposal

Reviews starts with a proposal. Someone wants to change something — strategy, a process, a piece of technology.

So why do they need other people’s opinions? They need to agree that this needs to be done. If it does, they need to find its best form.

Let’s say you want to make a change. You want to move something. Say you want to… lift a weight.

You might be lifting too much; you might get hurt. You might lifting too little; you won’t gain here. Your form matters. It is strenuous to grasp posture under pressure. It is helpful to have your team coach, critique, and engage. You might be doing the wrong lift; it’s leg day! You can at least use encouragement.

Heavy work.

Moving ideas is challenging, chaotic, and sometimes lonely work. First proposals usually suck. They sometimes solve the wrong problem. They lack clarity. They lack the completeness required to achieve their objectives. As a point of self-service, here are questions a proposer might ask at this stage.

• Am I clearly describing the problem I’m trying to solve?
• How quickly am I getting to the point?
• (after taking time away from the proposal) How would I review this? How would my reviewers?

The answers to these question are invaluable.

Scoping intent and size

A proposal starts with scoping the intent and size of your change.

An intent is stepping up to the lifting platform. You might have a polished thought, or a vague idea. It doesn’t matter yet. You’re here. You’re visible to an audience. You’re receptive.

Intent.

I see sizes of changes in roughly 3 levels.

• Mission: a change to the core of why your team exists.
• Project: a change to the tactics of what your team is working on next.
• Component: a change to an independent, well understood module.

The specifics can change with the environment. However, we all need to think about how we balance these categories. If you have too many mission sized proposals you’re unlikely to make real progress. It is the same if you’re only changing components. Your reviewers will help you size your changes. Like setting the right weights.

Scope.

The Audience

So who reviews? A variety of people who care about the work. It is useful to consider them through their incentives.

Context: establishing the why.
Context reviewers point to problems and priorities that need attention. They expose unknowns. These might be risks, past attempts, or important details. They usually cause the largest changes in direction. They should review early to avoid missed expectations.

Correctness: the bridge from the why to the what.
Correctness reviewers ensure that a proposed change achieves its goals. They start lending concreteness to the ideal state of the change.

Viability: the bridge between the what and the how.
Most changes have constraints around quality, time, and cost. Viability reviewers keep others honest in grounding proposals in reality.

Tactics: keeping the how tight.
Tactical reviewers engage in the right nuts and bolts for the job at hand. They help the proposer sweat the details as the proposer manages all asks.

Reviewers can combine incentives. It is best when they delineate feedback. Reviews that cover a complete set of incentives teach the problem end to end.

The Review

Combining the proposal and the audience requires an intentional approach.

The Review.

Proposer responsibilities

It is a proposer’s job to

• Own the proposal. It’s important that proposals have single ownership. From adding clarity, to addressing comments, to setting action items — the proposer is incentivized to see this through.
• Share the clearest proposal that they can see. Starting on a problem can be intimidating. A proposer should do their best with what they have.
• Invite the right balance of incentives. Not too many, not too few. Getting this right is an art. We’ve found good lift from the concept of designated reviewers. It lets the proposer explicitly assign responsibility to their teammates in asking for feedback.
• Provide the work required to have an opinion. This is an act of providing equity to those who seek it. Never free, and transparently earned. This is usually assigned reading, ahead of time.
• Choose the appropriate format for receiving feedback. Certain proposals need deep thought. These are better reviewed in writing, or with specialized tools like code reviews. Others need a rapid, engaged back and forth. Meetings are great for these. We’ve found pre-reads, stage gates, and coaching to be helpful to improving our review formats.
• Provide and meet timelines. It can be demoralizing to act on a decision, only to see conflicting feedback come in after.
• Address feedback. This doesn’t mean it needs acceptance, but attention. What not to include can make or break a proposal.
• Iterate with reviewers.
• Give a damn.

Reviewer responsibilities

It is a reviewer’s job to

• Do the work necessary to have an opinion.
• Provide feedback that addresses the strongest version of the proposal.
• Match the proposal with their bar to move forward. Cutting down a weak proposal before it matures is a sign of a bad incentive at play.
• Join the conversation if they weren’t included, and want to be.
• Provide signal. Avoid noise and tedium. No one needs non-sequiturs. No one needs know-it-alls.
• Meet timelines.
• Iterate with the proposer.
• Give a damn.

Alignment

Reviews should serve their purpose. They should shape the ideas worth going after. They should pause the ones that aren’t. Doing reviews well should be one of the best habits of teams.

What might this look like? Proposers receive bite sized feedback at each step. Every pass increases the certainty of the proposal. Everyone involved learns something new. Controversial points are well examined. Uncontroversial ones progress quickly. The next steps in the plan are clear and actionable. The process improves between instances. Folks trust that the right things are being worked on, in the right way.

Participants celebrate progress (gains!) together.

In an aligned world, the weights balance. It is just. It is right.

Just so.

Thanks to Aubrey Blanche, The Mathpath, Charles Chen, Jessica Venticinque, Kate Mercado, Ryan Oman, and several others at Forward for shaping this essay.