26.4 · RFCs and strategy, estimating, incidents and mentoring, and organisation-level bets

Above senior level the output is not only code. It is decisions other people can follow, plans that survive contact with reality, a team that recovers well and grows, and bets that pay off over years.

Mental model. Make decisions explicit and reversible where possible, plans honest about uncertainty, and teams better because you were there.

Decisions and plans

RFCs, ADRs, technical strategy, build-versus-buy, estimates and sequencing.

  1. How do you write and run an RFC, record decisions as ADRs, set technical strategy, and decide between build, buy and an Apple API? 26.4.1 · L8
    A design document or RFC exists to get the right decision made by the right people with the context to judge it. A good one has: the problem and why now, goals…
  2. How do you estimate honestly, cut scope, and sequence a large migration: ranges, the critical path, vertical slices and risk-first ordering? 26.4.2 · L5
    Estimate in ranges, not points, because uncertainty is the real content of an estimate. Ask for an optimistic, a most likely and a pessimistic figure; the…

People and the organisation

Incidents, mentoring and hiring, and multi-year platform bets.

  1. How do you run an engineering incident, hold a blameless review, and mentor and hire well: roles, mitigation first, rubrics and calibration? 26.4.3 · L8
    Incident response. The priority is to stop the harm, not to find the culprit. Define severities by user impact, and have named roles: an incident commander who…
  2. How do you think about a platform organisation and multi-year technical bets: charter, paved road, build versus buy versus Apple, sequencing and measuring success? 26.4.4 · L13
    At organisation level the question is how a hundred engineers ship quality faster over years. A platform team is justified when several product teams solve the…

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