It Worked Is Not the Same as It Was a Good Call

A customer demanded an immediate deployment to production on a Friday evening, and the team approved it without any review. They were praised for it working on Monday. Another team member took a week to properly ship a change, but it was behind a flag with a rollback, tested against real volumes. A hidden dependency failed during the rollout, and that failure is what people remember.

The lesson learned was not from the handbook but from the applause and the shortcut being effective. The team learned that giving shortcuts can be beneficial, and not being overly cautious can be a risk to reputation. The mistake made often is judging decisions based on the outcome rather than what was known at the time they were made.

The good decision that was taken might have led to the site being down twice in three instances, but we can never know the other two outcomes. This affects our own habits too; every risky call that succeeds gets remembered positively, while every careful call that fails is seen as proof that care is slow and pointless. In a few years, we might be confident risk-takers with no idea how many times we were saved.

Therefore, when judging a decision, consider what was known at the time, what could have been found out, what the costs were, and the downside if nothing was done. Then, ask if we would make the same call with the same information, knowing it could go either way. If not, it was a lucky good call that deserves a quiet word, even if it went well.

If it was a good call that faced the world, it deserves defending openly, by someone senior enough to make the defense stick. Luck visits everyone, so do not let it shape our standards.