In all the industries people thrive to excel. If they can’t then they at least try to follow the principle “Save Your Ass” (SYA) from the getting whipped. This is an art which is normally acquired by experience, even though there are some lucky bastards who are born with this. So what are we talking here, how to save one’s ass? No sir. That’s the least of anyone’s concern and almost every coffee shop discussion revolves mostly around this.
Now in the software industry as many are aware, the responsibilities are pretty diluted. The management calls this famously “Risk Mitigation”. Even though this has a lot of advantages, when misused can cause greater vice than all the virtues that it was meant for. Due to the dilution of the responsibilities in the s/w industry for a particular task’s success and failure there are many people responsible all along the hierarchy and mainly across the hierarchy. What I mean by across is “peers”.
This is the problem area that we will try to focus today and see what SYA principle does. Assume a big project in which many people are working. For Risk Mitigation, each task has many people working as primary, primary secondary, secondary secondary, Risk Manager, Quality Manager bla bla bla… Not one has his or her responsibilities clear. Each pitches in for the other at any given time. So everyone is doing everything no matter the expertise or inclination. No one’s complaining until things go fine.
But then murphy’s laws, things that can go wrong will always go wrong. Assume in this scenario where everyone is doing everything, something goes wrong. Hmmm… Now someone has to fix it and go ahead right. But as it happens always, the first thing that is done is to find “Who” did it… That’s when the risk mitigation funda falls on its ass. Who is to be held responsible? All have done everything right… There is no traceability and thus no real ownership and further no responsibility. The SYA principle kicks in and the blame game starts… Each one blames the other and the politically stronger even though un just generally wins this blame game and saves his ass. The ones who might be innocent are caught and punished for the folly and are made to slog… Now these victims understand this principle of “SYA” and one of the tactics of practicing it “Blame Game” and this viscous cycle continues until… I don’t know.;. Haven’t seen that yet. Maybe the project gets scrapped… May be the management is changed…
But is that the solution? Can this so called theory… Everyone can do everything really mitigate the risks… I don’t think so…
Now in the software industry as many are aware, the responsibilities are pretty diluted. The management calls this famously “Risk Mitigation”. Even though this has a lot of advantages, when misused can cause greater vice than all the virtues that it was meant for. Due to the dilution of the responsibilities in the s/w industry for a particular task’s success and failure there are many people responsible all along the hierarchy and mainly across the hierarchy. What I mean by across is “peers”.
This is the problem area that we will try to focus today and see what SYA principle does. Assume a big project in which many people are working. For Risk Mitigation, each task has many people working as primary, primary secondary, secondary secondary, Risk Manager, Quality Manager bla bla bla… Not one has his or her responsibilities clear. Each pitches in for the other at any given time. So everyone is doing everything no matter the expertise or inclination. No one’s complaining until things go fine.
But then murphy’s laws, things that can go wrong will always go wrong. Assume in this scenario where everyone is doing everything, something goes wrong. Hmmm… Now someone has to fix it and go ahead right. But as it happens always, the first thing that is done is to find “Who” did it… That’s when the risk mitigation funda falls on its ass. Who is to be held responsible? All have done everything right… There is no traceability and thus no real ownership and further no responsibility. The SYA principle kicks in and the blame game starts… Each one blames the other and the politically stronger even though un just generally wins this blame game and saves his ass. The ones who might be innocent are caught and punished for the folly and are made to slog… Now these victims understand this principle of “SYA” and one of the tactics of practicing it “Blame Game” and this viscous cycle continues until… I don’t know.;. Haven’t seen that yet. Maybe the project gets scrapped… May be the management is changed…
But is that the solution? Can this so called theory… Everyone can do everything really mitigate the risks… I don’t think so…
No comments:
Post a Comment