This may just be a terminology mismatch. I would consider the tasks you’ve mentioned to just be part of your day-to-day work, and yes, if you’re not doing those you can expect to be pulled up by your line manager/pm/whoever’s running the show. I usually see accountability talked about in terms of the quality and timeliness of the deliverable. If your team’s deliverable isn’t on time, it’s not because developer ‘A’ failed to deliver their ticket on time, it’s because the team as a whole didn’t manage their resources appropriately, didn’t spot the slippage and didn’t adjust or escalate the issue in time. If there’s a bug in the code, it’s not because developer ‘B’ forgot a bounds check, it was down to the whole team to ensure the quality of the deliverable, probably via code review.
Holding the individual solely responsible for this sort of thing is counterproductive, as it tends to lead to people trying to cover up mistakes, which rarely goes well, and means others don’t get a chance to learn from it.
None of which is to say that the indivuduals shouldn’t be held to the quality of their work. If the work they’re delivering consistently isn’t up to scratch, whether that’s found through code review or a bug report, they first need help to improve, and only if that doesn’t work should they face the inevitable consequences.
I would consider the tasks you’ve mentioned to just be part of your day-to-day work
I mean, that’s the joke… just like doing code reviews is literally part of your everyday work. The joke is that the first few things are things that are very divisive and then they get increasingly more ridiculous including individual accountability and code ownership. In regards to the rest of your post, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that called “individual accountability”. Individual accountability is exactly what it says in the dictionary:
the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it, or the degree to which this happens:
There were furious demands for greater police accountability.
Accountability is important these days, and managers aren’t always willing to adopt risky strategies.
a situation in which someone is responsible for things that happen and can give a satisfactory reason for them:
The organization suffers from a lack of accountability.
greater/increased/more accountability The public has been demanding greater accountability from lawmakers.
If the people around you are using accountability in the way you described, then they’re just morons who make up shit.
This may just be a terminology mismatch. I would consider the tasks you’ve mentioned to just be part of your day-to-day work, and yes, if you’re not doing those you can expect to be pulled up by your line manager/pm/whoever’s running the show. I usually see accountability talked about in terms of the quality and timeliness of the deliverable. If your team’s deliverable isn’t on time, it’s not because developer ‘A’ failed to deliver their ticket on time, it’s because the team as a whole didn’t manage their resources appropriately, didn’t spot the slippage and didn’t adjust or escalate the issue in time. If there’s a bug in the code, it’s not because developer ‘B’ forgot a bounds check, it was down to the whole team to ensure the quality of the deliverable, probably via code review.
Holding the individual solely responsible for this sort of thing is counterproductive, as it tends to lead to people trying to cover up mistakes, which rarely goes well, and means others don’t get a chance to learn from it.
None of which is to say that the indivuduals shouldn’t be held to the quality of their work. If the work they’re delivering consistently isn’t up to scratch, whether that’s found through code review or a bug report, they first need help to improve, and only if that doesn’t work should they face the inevitable consequences.
I mean, that’s the joke… just like doing code reviews is literally part of your everyday work. The joke is that the first few things are things that are very divisive and then they get increasingly more ridiculous including individual accountability and code ownership. In regards to the rest of your post, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that called “individual accountability”. Individual accountability is exactly what it says in the dictionary:
If the people around you are using accountability in the way you described, then they’re just morons who make up shit.