Lord of the Repository

In Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin’s “Where is the Foreman”, he advocated for a “foreman” with exclusive commit rights who would review each and every potential commit before it made its way into the repository in the interest of ensuring quality. While I am in sympathy with some of his points, ultimately the idea breaks down for a number of reasons, most particularly in terms of introducing a bottleneck. A single person will only be able to keep up with so many team members and if a sudden bout of the flu can bring your operation to a standstill, there’s a huge problem.

Unlike Jason Gorman, I believe that egalitarian development teams are not the answer. When everyone is responsible for something, it is cliche that nobody takes responsibility for it (they’ve even given the phenomena its own name). However, being responsible for something does not mean dictating. Dictators eventually tend to fall prey to tunnel vision.

Jason Gorman pointed out in a follow-up post, “Why Code Inspections Need To Be Egalitarian”, “You can’t force people, con people, bribe people or blackmail them into caring.” You can, however, help people to understand the reasons behind decisions and participate in the making of those decisions. Understanding and participation are more conducive to ownership and adoption than coercion. Promoting ownership and adoption of values vital to the mission is the essence of leadership.

A recent Tweet from Thomas Cagley illustrates the need for reflective, purposeful leadership:

Is the leadership style you employ a conscious choice? It should be.

— Thomas Cagley (@TCagley) March 5, 2014

In my experience, the best leaders exercise their power lightly. It’s less a question of what they can decide and more a question of should they decide out of hand. When your philosophy is “I make the decisions”, you make yourself a hostage to presence. Anywhere you’re not, no decision will be made, regardless of how disastrous that lack of action may be. I learned from an old mentor that the mark of a true leader is that they can sleep when they go on vacation. They’re still responsible for what happens, but they’ve equipped their team to respond reasonably to issues rather than to mill about helplessly.

In his follow-up post, “Oh Foreman, Where art Thou?”, Uncle Bob moderated his position a bit, introducing the idea of assistants to help in the reviews and extension of commit rights to those team members who had proved trustworthy. It’s a better position than the first post, but still a bit too controlling and self-certain. The goal should not be to grow a pack of followers who mimic the alpha wolf, but to grow the predators who snap at your heals. This keeps them and just as important, you, on the path of learning and growth.