Engineering Manager's Handbook

10

Fostering Accountability

The work of software engineers involves making individual contributions toward shared team goals and objectives. In making contributions, they are each given responsibility for some portion of those shared goals. Even so, we may not always be able to count on everyone to display the same level of responsibility and commitment to their work. How can engineering managers encourage their engineers to take an active role in team objectives?

To manage a high-performance software engineering team, you will eventually need to think about accountability. In a workplace setting, accountability is the willingness to take responsibility for one’s actions and their outcomes. Accountable team members take ownership of their work, ...