The enemy within
It used to be that I did not care much for defensive programming outside of a system’s boundaries. It used to be that I did not really care or believed in strict source control (as in authorise only some people to touch a particular file). It used to be that I did not really believe in code reviews.
I now care for these and it is not a good thing. I care about these things because I do not trust the developers I work with to do the right thing, whether it is making the code better, improving their style, teaching me new things, or even write descent unit tests.
No that I am perfect in any ways but I used to be able to trust people in the team to correct me and help me get better. I used to be able to trust people on the team to catch my mistakes and fix them.
Work is a lot less enjoyable when that trust is gone.
December 31st, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Hi Denis, what happened? Why did it change? What would it take to fix it?
January 1st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Let me see management changed, over committed failed to motivate people. The more experienced and talented members of the team left which provided less structure and safe guards. Now as we know unmotivated people don’t give their best. They do just enough to satisfy their management.
So there are too possible fixes as far as the end product is concerned: re-motivate people (difficult without a fresh start) or make it more difficult to pass (change the process to be less trusting and more controlled).
We will see if the first can happen but the second is definitely within our control and could prove a useful training exercise to elevate the level of our personnel. I also know that a much smaller team of more talented people would be easier to motivate and would be levels of magnitude more productive than this team.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Forgot one thing Miki:
Happy New Year !
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:08 am
Was the management change in your department of company-wide? Might I ask if you were acquired?
I ask because it sounds as if your management change turned into a complete cultural change.
There are things you can do, but they depend on whether it is department level or the whole company.
Denis, I understand that it might not be a good idea to post the answers publicly, so please feel free to write me directly and I’ll be happy to respond.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:43 am
[...] over at One Brike At a Time recently expressed frustration at having to use low trust practices: It used to be that I did not [...]
January 26th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
[...] and how a so-called follower can lead. It all started with Denis’ post December 31 describing what was happening in his [...]
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:34 am
I want to address defensive programming specifically. I do not think it is related to the caliber of our fellow teammates. The whole theory of specifying pre- and post-conditions, plus loop invariants, is to ensure the correctness of and to expose the assumptions inherent in code, even within our own code. We need to push for more defensive coding, with ample use of assertion statements.