The Long Feedback Loop

Management

I hate it.

As programmers we are used to short feedback loops:

Arguably, the write code part is the longest in this chain/circle since it requires the most thought and preparation. The others, depending on the size of the project, are on the magnitude of seconds.

Since my role change, I read about how the feedback loop, naturally, becomes longer (aside: The One About Management (Pt. 1)).

After 7+ months I still have to get used to this. When taking a decision, whether it is to hire somebody or sponsor a course for the community (free entry), I’ll only know whether that was a good decision after, real examples:

  • 1.5 months after hiring a person (I already had both a bad and a good example here that revealed themselves after this time span)
  • 4 months after the course has started…

Now maybe 1.5 months is a really short feedback loop for seeing that the person is indeed a great fit or not (here we might discuss the interview process as well - which in the case of the “bad” hire has, obviously, failed). Still, compare 1.5 months with several seconds. The difference is infinite 1.

Not to mention that an outcome (see the fatal error #7: Concentrate On Problems, Rather Than Objectives from 13 fatal errors managers make and how you can avoid them by W. Steven Brown) is influenced by so many external factors out of my reach. Are the students interested? Is the teacher matching their experience level when explaining things? Is the curriculum adequate for the target audience to whom we marketed the course? Needless to say, there are so many steps that could have influenced the end result in any way.

In some cases this long feedback loop might be reduced by regular meetings (I’m thinking here 1-1s for the development of the people and for staying “connected” with them - some are remote), and scrutinizing closely every step of a decision. But the results feedback is not guaranteed to be there and of course sometimes other people depend on those decisions to be taken in a timely manner.

So I guess it’s better to fail fast?

  1. For all intents and purposes. ↩︎