Reading time - 9 min.

Nov 2021

Inspired by Working with Claire (Claire Hughes Johnson - COO of Stripe).

This is the set of operating and organizational principles I try to stick with. Quite often I'm part of bigger organization or project, with different rules, which I obey. However, I try to sell these principles to this wider org, and expect them to be adopted in a department or project which is under my responsibility. But first and foremost I try to stick with these principles myself.

Who does what by when

• If there is a to do item - it has to have defined "Who does what by when". There are some tasks that do not have a real deadline. If so - invent it. It's much harder for things to slip indefinitely if they have due dates. Even arbitrary ones. Deadline has a day, and an hour.
• There is one notable exception - Backlog. Which may contain some vague, and not yet shaped items, or just items without due date. Thats OK. If Backlog exits - there should be a scheduled recurring prioritization session.
• If you see that you are likely to fail to deliver on your promised date - let me (or the person responsible for the project) know in advance. Please make sure you do that before due date, not after.

Whom should you (or I) talk to

When there is a lot of ambiguity (i.e. new team formed) RACI framework is really helpful. Each task may have 5 types of people related to it:

• Responsible (The Doer or Assigned) - The person who is doing the work. She will be assigned to Notion (or Trello or Jira) tasks. She will negotiate deadlines. She will inform if the task is off-track.
• Accountable (The Owner) - The person who has to approve, or sign-off the project. Or the one who just delegated the task. By default it’s the same person as Responsible. If Accountable and Responsible are different persons - it should be clearly clearly stated, who is Accountable (The Owner). The Owner may be your senior who delegated the task, it may be CEO :). There should be only one Owner per task/project/epic.
• Supporting - The person (or team) doing part of the work. I.e. working on the projects dependency.
• Consulted - People who might have important information for the project, yet does not play active role.
• Informed (FYI) - It's like CC: in email. If you are in CC field - the response from you is not expected, yet information may be valuable to you, or you may need to intervene.

Small and clearly defined tasks usually have only one person assigned. Thats the Responsible (and the Accountable in the one person). No one to be consulted, and no one to be informed during the process.

Bigger tasks - usually goes with a least two fields - Responsible and FYI.

And some task may have three or all five types of people involved.

If you are not sure who (you or someone more senior) should be Accountable, keep the Accountable field empty (this will default to you) and put that senior person as FYI, she will figure it out.