The Technician

Accountability is a word that’s getting tossed around a lot lately. You hear people saying things like:

– That developer should be held accountable for the validation problems.

– The tester should be accountable for not finding that bug.

– BP needs to be accountable for destroying an ecosystem.

The term seems to be thrown around most often when parts of a system fail. BP is part of a larger industry which that’s regulated. The government agency responsible for monitoring safety measures is responsible for ensuring they follow safety regulations. So when BP made their whoopsie daisy, the fingers were pointed squarely at them. However, where were the regulators? There were tons of opportunities for the government to push feedback to BP regarding the safety of their operation. But it seemed like no one was talking.

The development process is strikingly similar. Any development team worth their bits has a process that puts any issue in front of at least two parties at all times. Joel Spolsky’s infamous Bug 1203, a quick story about the interactions between a dev and a tester, is the picture of accountability, and shows that without active management and constant feedback being exchanged, things don’t get done.

A quick synopsis and commentary: Jill the tester finds a bug, and provides feedback to the dev team via the ticket system. In doing so, Jill has started the feedback loop, and made it the responsibility of the dev team to investigate the issue. The dev team, as they are prone to doing, deny responsibility for the issue, and mark the issue as ‘NOT A BUG’ Having done so, they’ve put the onus on Jill to prove it’s really a bug, which she does (probably in about 2 seconds). It’s again the responsibility of the dev team to fix the bug, which they do. Jill confirms the fix, and thereby closes the loop.

What’s important to realize is that in this type of process, it is the responsibility of anyone and everyone involved to be accountable for their role, and be focused on pushing feedback to the next person. Once there’s a break in the loop, the issue is likely to be dropped, and never fixed. The last person holding the ball is the screwup. I’m sure someone somewhere is really upset they didn’t ask BP about that little safety measure.

Many people value money as the most important thing in life, and will gladly trade time for it. The pursuit of saving money is an extremely American one. People will spend time in line for free stuff, just because it’s free. Motorists getting tickets will spend days in court, just to avoid a fine. Clipping coupons has become an art form, and even extended to the digital world in the form of sites like SlickDeals and Groupon.

Me, I like time. To me, time is way more valuable than the almighty dollar. Reason: I can’t get it back. Evar.

If I get a parking ticket, I know that if I pony up that those 55 greenbacks, chances are there will be a check with my name on it in the next couple of weeks that puts that those 55 American pesos back in my pocket. If went to court, I’d never get back that 3-4 hours of my life. I’d also probably lose the case. I’d also probably spend that time sitting next to someone who smells like cheese. Paying up gives me a net gain of 3-4 hours of my life, which I could spend doing stuff I like.

Being on a development team in a startup is pretty much the same thing. Your team should be focusing as much time as possible on actually developing your product. That means doing the things unique to your business and focusing on what your company decides it’s core competency should be. However, there’s tons of work that is hard, time-consuming, and generally unpleasant. Not only is it unpleasant, but it can be incredibly time-consuming, because chances are, you’re not good at it, or find it kind of icky. Leave that stuff to someone else. Even better, find someone who likes doing that stuff and pay them to do it.

In the cloud-infested webscape that exists today, there are any number of companies that have decided that their core competency is something specialized that you probably need. Companies that specialize in IT management, video encoding, DNS, storage, billing, etc. all exist and are willing to accept a chunk of your cold hard cash to provide a service. The most important thing to realize, is that if time is of the essence (and it always is), you’re not just buying a service, you’re also buying the time it would take to you to build that service yourself. So don’t be a crafty coupon-clipper and build it yourself. Buy back that precious, precious time and spend it doing something you really like.