LinkedIn·Sunday, 23 August 2026·2d ago

I think we’ve made predictability too much about the date. Can we tell the customer when this will be done? Can we give leadership a…

Sonya Siderova

Founder & CEO at Nave | Helping enterprise agile coaches prove transformation value with metrics executives trust

I think we’ve made predictability too much about the date. Can we tell the customer when this will be done? Can we give leadership a reliable commitment? Can we forecast the next release and keep that promise? Those things matter. But there’s something about this conversation that has always bothered me. When the date slips, someone has to stand in front of the customer or leadership and explain why. And that person is rarely the reason it slipped. They didn’t create the queue of work waiting to be finished. They didn’t decide that four initiatives should run at the same time. They don’t control every dependency or handoff slowing the work down. But they’re still expected to own the commitment. And when it happens repeatedly, we start questioning the person making the forecast instead of the system that makes the forecast unreliable. I don’t think that’s where accountability belongs. A reliable commitment should be something the delivery system is capable of supporting, not something an individual is expected to somehow guarantee despite it. That’s why the real value of predictability, to me, has never been the date itself. It’s what we have to improve in the system before that date becomes something another human being can stand behind. The kind of system I want us to build isn’t one that has become exceptionally good at predicting its problems. It’s one that keeps getting better at removing them. Because nobody should have to keep defending promises their workflow was never designed to keep. #NavigateYourFlow #EvidenceDrivenLeadership #SystemsThinking

♥ 10

View on LinkedIn