Ever since I was on the Troubleshooting Agile podcast, I've followed Squirrel and Jeffrey. (I highly recommend their podcast.)
Recently, Squirrel posted something fascinating on LinkedIn: Aim for a “single source of lies” about your business.
That's quite a provocative idea, especially when many of us persist in looking for a “single source of truth.” Why might you want a single source of lies? Any time you want to track information before you can fully verify that data. Some examples:
- If a team is trying to reduce their cycle time, but the team doesn't do just one experiment at a time. Instead, they create hypotheses, review all their flow metrics, and change several things at the same time.
- Tracking the elusive idea of return on investment. Too often, we can't calculate the real ROI for at least a year post-release. Sometimes, even longer.
When we choose a single source of lies, we can see our progress toward understanding our reality. That understanding builds trust.
A Single Source of Lies Builds Trust
If everyone tracks their “single source of truth” themselves, we don't have a single source of anything—truth or lies. Instead, if the organization creates a single source of lies, we can monitor our progress. We don't have perfect data. Instead, we have known imperfect data.
Since we know we have imperfect data, we can build trust with each other. We might not like the reality, but we can see it. When we realize each of us is imperfect, we can choose our actions to progress to more perfection.
A single source of lies allows us to see where we're headed. And because we admit it's a “lie,” we continue to monitor that data and our progress. We lift that pressure for perfection, because we have a single source of lies.
Then, once we achieve the “end” or “done,” or anything else that allows us to fully verify that data, we can replace the single source of lies with the truth. Yes, that's when we can discover that elusive single source of truth.
Too often, we prematurely optimize with specific data in our quest for a single source of truth. Instead, we can consider optimizing for sufficient data from one source to create known “lies.” That allows us to make progress with imperfect data.
And trust our imperfect reality.