# Evaluating Trade Offs

Help users navigate complex product decisions by weighing competing priorities and...

- Repository: https://github.com/RefoundAI/lenny-skills (1456 stars)
- Category: Engineering
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-07-16
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill evaluating-trade-offs -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill evaluating-trade-offs -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill evaluating-trade-offs -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill evaluating-trade-offs -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

Help users navigate complex product decisions by weighing competing priorities and calculating long-term value. This skill covers build-vs-buy logic, technical debt evaluation, and communicating tradeoffs to senior leadership.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Evaluating Trade-Offs

Master the art of weighing competing options to maximize long-term impact and team velocity.

Help the user with evaluating trade-offs using insights from 14 guests and posts across Lenny's Podcast and Newsletter.

## How to Help

1. **Framework Selection** - Match the right decision template to the specific tradeoff scenario you are facing.
2. **ROI Calculation** - Assist in modeling the long-term business impact versus the operational costs of a proposed path.
3. **Stakeholder Communication** - Refine how you present tradeoffs to leadership to ensure they see the hidden costs of saying yes.
4. **Bias Detection** - Identify common traps like the sunk cost fallacy or the just one more engineer myth in your current thinking.

## Core Principles

### Surface rabbit holes during shaping
Ryan Singer: "I often use this analogy of if you're doing a home renovation, you can have the most beautiful rendering of the new bedroom and we're going to have these lamps on the side of the bed that are coming out from the wall. But if you haven't checked if there's electricity in that wall there or not, it's going to drastically change the cost and the time and everything."

Involve senior engineers early to identify technical complexities and infrastructure constraints before committing the team to a high-fidelity design.

### Quantify the risk of inaction
From "This Week #13: Balancing outcome-thinking with design and technical requirements ⚖️": "To answer your question about how we balanced this outcome-thinking with engineering and design needs (which often don’t directly drive that outcome), it’s simple, extend your outcome thinking further out into the future. How much would this work benefit your outcome (e.g. growth, quality, retention) 1+ years out? What happens if you don’t do it? What are the chances of it being successful?"

The rest: https://github.com/RefoundAI/lenny-skills/blob/HEAD/skills/evaluating-trade-offs/SKILL.md