AGILE IN ACTION

Over the past two years I've been seeing teams fail because people are not holding one another accountable. People tell me they are scared of being perceived to blame and so instead they say nothing. I asked some people why they don't hold people accountable. They responded with things like: "I'm really uncomfortable doing that." Or "I'm not good at saying that kind of stuff. I'm just a developer." And I empathize. I really do. I'm uncomfortable holding people accountable too. I'm guessing everyone probably is to some degree. And by the way, I possess those developer genes. That said, I still think these responses are phooey! Being able to communicate is a basic human skill. We all do it, admittedly some better than others, but just because something is difficult doesn't mean we should stop doing it. How will we learn if we don't practice?

For a while now, there's been some trepidation in the team when holding people accountable. People seem to have difficulty knowing how to hold someone else accountable. It's a communication problem. People are so worried about being seen to blame someone for something that they'd rather avoid the conversation completely. The problem with this approach is that the things that shouldn't be happening keep happening because the people doing them don't know they shouldn't be doing them.

Via Christopher Avery . Accountability is an agreement to be held to account by another for your operations or the results you produce. If meetings are called to determine who was acccountable, you're looking for people who are trying their best to hide. Not the sign of a healthy culture. Responsibility is a feeling of ownership and stands out when you are leading, learning, correcting, and improving. The sign of a healthy, high-performing culture.

The presentation was recorded at the Developer Testing Forum in 2004. Kent talks about how the developer tests produced by test-driven development directly contribute to the health of software, and how they can give a developer a sense of accountability without apportioning blame.