There are certain times in life that you face the difficulty of making a decision. You know what I am talking about, right?! Those decisions that make you feel uncomfortable. Those are the ones that keep you awake at the night, or just get into your dreams and haunt you there as well. Those are the ones where you know that one of them will definitely make you better off (possible also to be worse off) and the other won’t, but you don’t know which one it is.
As a Product Manager my main accountability is to produce decisions for the product. There have been many decisions I have taken. Which product to develop, which tech stack to choose, which team setup to build, which development framework to adopt, which architecture to build, which features to prioritize, and many more. On a daily basis, there are some decisions made. Most of them are within an acceptable range of failure risk, thus making the decision and seeing the output does not cost that much. There are also some decisions that have a long term impact, illuminated either as a success or as a failure.
Before making a decision, it is important to have a certain amount of information base to be more informed about the options. Mostly there is no limited cap on how much information you can acquire, but you won’t have 100% visibility over the options and their potential outcomes. I like the exploration vs. exploitation technique to gather as much info as possible given a limited time before I proceed with the decision.
When making a decision, it is significant to have the proper presentation of the options to yourself and the others who might be impacted by your decision. The communication of the options and the decision you make should be transparent and understandable by all impacted. If required get an input from the others around, otherwise make the decision.
Once the decision made, that’s it. You take the option that somehow hooked your brain and now it is the time to live and experience the outcome. It is of utmost importance to not regret at this point It won’t help making the situation better, neither will it change it. Regretting the decisions after it is made can only make it worse, because you will blame yourself for the whole thing. I do not know how to formulate it scientifically, or more persuasively in any form, but stand behind the decisions you make and see how you can improve them, regardless of the outcome.