Field note
Required fields that teach people to lie
· Daniel Tan
The fiction
Budget, authority, timeline — asked too early, required to save the record. The honest user types a placeholder. The report then treats the placeholder as a fact. Forecasts harden around numbers nobody meant.
The quieter fix
Make the field optional until a named stage. Or split ‘unknown’ as a real value that does not pollute averages. Training people to ‘be more disciplined’ does not survive a busy Monday. The application has to stop demanding a story the team does not have yet.