Taking Responsibility for Your Work

Principle · Chapter 17

Own the outcome

• Architects who excel take responsibility and avoid making excuses.
• Easy to own success — leadership means owning failure too.
• When things go wrong, spend energy on options to fix the issue rather than blaming others. Colleagues respect those who take ownership.

Preventing software rot

• Collective responsibility prevents software rot and disorder in a system.
• Degradation often stems from culture: one known issue left unfixed makes it easier to leave the next unresolved (broken-windows effect).
• If you cannot fix an issue immediately, contain it — e.g. protect the rest of the code from offending code by commenting it out.
• As architect, create a culture where degradation is unacceptable.

Watch the big picture

• Problems can be small and slow, unnoticed at first, then get out of hand.
• Keep the team continuously aware of the project’s state and the big picture; lead so degradation never takes the team by surprise.

Citations

• Software Architect’s Handbook (Packt, 2018), Ch.17 “Taking responsibility for your work”, p. 1184.