[HN Gopher] On Accountability in Software Development (2020)
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       On Accountability in Software Development (2020)
        
       Author : kiyanwang
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2022-11-20 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (franciscomt.medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (franciscomt.medium.com)
        
       | drewcoo wrote:
       | Simple, straightforward, and completely misunderstands creative
       | work. Delivering software is design work, not the work on the
       | factory floor.
       | 
       | And the tension, where it exists, is from bean counters trying to
       | model everything as an assembly line.
        
         | jltsiren wrote:
         | It's complexity, not creative work. There are entire industries
         | based on delivering creative work on strict deadlines. The
         | quality of the products is often unpredictable due to the
         | nature of creative work, but the people doing the work can meet
         | the deadlines reliably. In a complex project, the
         | unpredictability affects both the quality and the functionality
         | of the product.
        
       | falanfilan wrote:
       | Casus yazilim rat
        
       | reuben364 wrote:
       | The transition from accountability to predictability was rather
       | unmotivated. I guess accountability is a strategy of
       | optimization. You want to identify when sufficient gains can be
       | made by unilaterally adjusting the process of an individual or
       | team or organizational unit, and reinforce that adjustment with
       | reward/punishment ranging from feelings of usefulness to monetary
       | reward to continued employment.
       | 
       | If you model your productivity as hierarchical composition of
       | dynamical systems, then I guess predictability would be a rapid
       | step response, unilaterally in each parameter, in each system.
       | Losses in productivity could then be traced back each system and
       | form a low-latency feedback loop.
       | 
       | This model is cold and calculating and probably wrong. I just
       | want to try make it more concrete.
        
         | philipwhiuk wrote:
         | Yeh this blog post felt like they had a title and something
         | they wanted to write about, but the two weren't on the same
         | topic.
         | 
         | If you're going to talk about accountability your closing
         | speech ought to at least mention the idea.
        
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