The Ahh Test

A guiding principle a team uses to decide whether to move forward with something: does it feel good and right, and does it support the system? It fails if something feels misaligned, wouldn’t serve a group of people, would create too much work or stress, or carries a security risk.

So what? The question is not whether a test passes but how a decision affects everything else. It’s a shared team judgement, not one person’s call.

Example: In a meeting, the team asks “does this pass our R test?” Where there’s doubt, the answer is “not quite yet”.