Want to know a secret to making decisions that will lead to better outcomes? Not so fast. Well actually, not too soon. The timing of when you make your decision will have a big impact on how well things work out.

Our natural tendency is to decide too early. It gives us the illusion of certainty. The problem is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Early decisions are made with less information than those we make later. Of course, it is possible to wait too long. You want to make decisions at the last responsible moment. This is the point where the cost of delaying the decision rises to meet the benefit of waiting for more information.
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One of the sessions I regret missing at Agile Open Northwest is one that was titled simply Agile Congress, the session notes for which begin with, “You have just been appointed the first scrum master of the United States House of Representatives…” Well, why not? As it turns out, the City of San Jose is all over that very idea.
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Deborah Hartman has just published an article on InfoQ called Teaching Games – Fun or Serious Business? Hint–the answer is: both. The article is chock-full of good links, including one to our own course, Creating Agile Games for Coaches and Consultants, which Chris co-created with Elisabeth Hendrickson.

A couple of weeks ago, Chris was the guest speaker at the Bay Area Agile Project Leadership Network's monthly meeting. It was an evening of game-playing and simulations. One of the most popular is a simple game that takes under five minutes to play, but always blows the tops of people's heads off by demonstrating concretely and irrevocably just how deeply multitasking cuts into productivity and even quality. This particular exercise led to some insightful conversations and aha moments, including:

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