Make the big calls yourself

Most choices in a feature are small, and a good team makes them without you. A few are not: the shape of a public API, a version number, a new dependency. This playbook gives your company a rule that says which calls are yours. Whoever meets such a choice asks it as a question, each manager passes it up, and it reaches you as one decision card with options, their consequences and a recommendation. Your answer goes back down to the team that asked.

Steps

Start from a company with a global manager, such as the one in Build a software company.

1. Choose All teams and give the global manager the rule together with the next goal:

2. The chat says · remembered · any change to the JSON shape, and the goal goes to backend with the rule attached.
3. Wait for the question. The rail marks the global manager ● All teams ◆ ? 1, and the card reads ? question · raised by @backend · waiting on you.
4. Press Alt+↑, then → to reach the card, walk to the option you want with ↓, and press Enter. To answer in your own words, choose Your own answer…, type it, and press Enter.

What you see

The question in our run was the kind a team should never guess: Adding task status (open/in_progress/done): what happens to the existing done boolean and the overdue rule? It came with three options, what each would change, recommended because …, and a row for your own answer. We chose Keep done, add status (done mirrors status). The card left, @backend working… appeared, and backend built exactly that: a status field, done kept in sync, and 21 tests passing.

The rule works deeper in the chart too. When we asked product for a release note and said the version number was our call, the member who wrote the note asked its manager, the question kept climbing, and it reached us as What release version number should docs/CHANGELOG.md use? with 0.1.0 recommended. We typed 0.2.0 - call it the status release, and 95 seconds later docs/CHANGELOG.md read ## [0.2.0].

In our run

About five minutes per decision, the build after it included, and about $1.10 for both rounds.

Make it yours

• Name your own calls. Swap the JSON rule for what matters in your project: new dependencies, database migrations, anything that touches billing.
• Say it once. The global manager saves the rule as a memory the moment you give it (· remembered ·), so it is part of how the company works rather than part of one message.
• Know what never climbs. Permission prompts skip the chain and come straight to you, such as ? @issues asks · needs your ok to run bash on the teams page.

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