Sensible defaults: A way to think about our technology practices
Jul 25, 2024
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The podcast discusses the concept of 'sensible defaults' in technology decision-making, exploring their importance and challenges. They share examples and origins of sensible defaults, emphasizing their role in guiding organizational practices. Topics include promoting a culture of questioning defaults in remote work, navigating disagreements in team decisions, and maximizing benefits through collaboration.
Sensible defaults promote informed decision-making and flexibility in technology practices.
Organizations can adapt and refine sensible defaults to improve development processes and team experiences.
Deep dives
Defining Sensible Defaults
Sensible defaults are considered good practices that are generally recommended unless a specific reason necessitates otherwise. Unlike best practices that often mandate a single approach, sensible defaults are flexible and require understanding the rationale behind each choice. Individuals are encouraged to explain deviations from sensible defaults based on their unique circumstances, fostering informed decision-making and shared learning.
Tailoring Sensible Defaults Across Organizations
Organizations may adapt sensible defaults to suit their specific contexts, ensuring alignment and efficient implementation across diverse teams and regions. Emphasis is placed on understanding the fundamental principles and reasons underlying sensible defaults rather than rigidly enforcing uniform practices. While variations may exist among organizations, the goal is to promote a standard starting point for teams to improve development processes and overall team experiences.
Evolution and Documentation of Sensible Defaults
Sensible defaults have evolved based on practical feedback and continuous refinement from global project experiences and community contributions. By documenting effective practices that may not be obvious or widely adopted, ThoughtWorks aims to share valuable insights for enhancing software development processes. The process involves assessing the relevance and effectiveness of practices to facilitate better outcomes, ensuring alignment with evolving industry standards.
Community-Driven Development of Sensible Defaults
ThoughtWorks leverages community input and collaborative platforms to establish sensible defaults across various domains, encouraging diverse perspectives and consensus-building. Through interactive discussions, virtual boards, and asynchronous contributions, teams collectively shape and refine sensible defaults within their respective disciplines. The approach emphasizes inclusive decision-making, constructive dialogue, and a commitment to testing effective practices within real-world contexts.
If you work in technology, you're constantly making decisions: not just what you should do, but also how you should do it. That's why we developed the concept of "sensible defaults" — practices and technology decisions that we generally see — in most scenarios — as the right way to do things.
Although we've been talking about sensible defaults internally for a few years now, we recently decided to share them publicly on our website. We did so because we believe it can help organizations think through their own approach to technology decision-making, something which is becoming increasingly challenging in a rapidly changing and complex world.
So, to discuss sensible defaults and explain precisely why we want to share them with the world, hosts Rebecca Parsons and Ken Mugrage are joined by Brandon Cook and Kief Morris, two Thoughtworkers that played an important role in putting our sensible defaults together. They discuss the origins of the sensible default idea, some examples, as well as the challenges of putting them into practice.