Fear of decision making often leads teams to exhibit one or more of these Agile ADHD symptoms:
* Disorganized software architectures and high levels of technical debt
* Avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained attention
* Easily distracted by desire to jump into coding
* Unable to complete tasks within iteration and release timeframes
* Unable to reach agreement needed to sustain any long term direction

This tutorial will help agile practitioners overcome the fear of decision making by first embracing that there are no right or wrong decisions. Agile development is ultimately driven by a series of decisions, all of which are made in the face of uncertainty.

Agile teams seem to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when any decision that does not yield to immediate resolution just gets tabled and returned to the backlog. This symptom is apparent when stories that may be highly valued by customers consistently receive very high estimates and consequently remain on the backlog. Too often agile teams avoid decisions that can’t be made with a snap judgment. If the answer is not so obvious that it can be made during a standup or iteration planning meeting then it just gets deferred. “Delay decisions until the last responsible moment”, is the agile principle quoted to defend this practice. This is too often used as a cop out to avoid confrontation and disagreement.

It is first important to expose how prevalent decisions are throughout agile development; from evaluating end user input to designing code structure. It is important to be more cognizant of when agile development decisions get made and who makes them. Many significant decisions are already committed before a story makes it to the backlog.

Tutorial participants will then work through an agile decision making exercise where they will learn to take advantage of two unavoidable facts:
• There are no right or wrong decisions, only better or worse
• All decisions are based on your belief in an uncertain future

Tutorial participants will take away principles and practices that enable their team to embrace uncertainty and be proactive in making better decisions at the most responsible moment. If used as directed, this tutorial is guaranteed to cure most Agile ADHD symptoms.