How to hold developers accountable
Without accountability, there is no functioning development organization., Without accountability, everything breaks down. Without developer accountability, there are more problems created all the time than the CTO can fix. But, CTOs and engineering managers struggle with holding developers accountable. Why and what can you do?
What is the difference between accountable and responsible? Responsible are to the individuals who complete a task, while accountable is the person who ensures the task is done - which in the case of developers might be the same person, although they are still two things not to be confused. Most prominent is this distinction with the RACI/RASCI framework, which makes it clear for each project and task who is responsible and who is accountable (highly recommended!).
Sometimes people confuse “holding someone accountable” with forcing things on people. “I make you accountable for …” is a sign of this culture. You can’t hold people accountable for things they or their team did not commit to. Holding people accountable has to mean holding people accountable for their commitment. For their time commitments (not arbitrary deadlines) and their quality commitments (not arbitrary metrics). Accountability in this sense has a lot to do with engineering culture. You commit to the engineering culture. And as a great CTO once said, “Engineering culture is binary, you’re either in or out.” You either act on your commitments or you don’t.
