From: "Bruce D. Wedding" 

Those XP threads are so big, I thought I'd take a bite off with this one.
Bob and Jon claim that "blame" is necessary for learning,
"cutting a weak member loose" and as a feedback mechanism.  I
can't argue that is is not valuable to know when you make a mistake.  It is
obviously valuable, to some degree.  What I've seen now that I've been
doing this for a while is that we ALL make mistakes.  I do not learn from
the type of mistakes I make now. They are intrinsic to what we do, every
industry has their analogous mistakes.  Draftsmen draw something mirrored
and the bolt holes don't line up.  A physician misses tying off one vessel
or leaves a scalpel in there when he closes.

Stuff happens.  It always will.  Just as I know that my array indexing was
off by one because I was passing data to Visual BASIC, I can just as easily
do it again because I don't do it very often.  I completely understand what
happened so there is nothing to learn but that we're all fallible.

Obligatory antectdotal story:  My boss and I split 59 software changes to
make a new release of software.  We divided them based on estimated effort
so it wasn't 29-30 necessarily.  In any event, I completed my changes on
time and my boss was way behind.  What did she do?  She sent emails to me,
the director and the VP claiming that one of my changes didn't work right.
I knew immediately that she was deflecting blame.  Don't play that game
with me if your ducks aren't in a row because I will shove it down your
throat. I replied back asking exactly WHAT was broken and asking her to
clarify that ALL of her changes were complete and I was holding up the
release.  She mentioned something in my code.  It was subjective, not a
bug, a matter of opinion.  I agreed with her changed the code in one day
and emailed all, "Let's release this baby, I'm ready now."  Guess
what?  She was caught like a deer in the headlights.  I ultimately
inventoried her code and found that she hadnn't started on 10 of the
changes and I found bugs in 7 of the changes she did make.  You can bet
your ass that the VP on down knew all about it.

The moral is, we all make mistakes so don't be too quick to judge lest you
get a boot in the rear.

To clarify my position; yes, learning can occur from some mistakes.  I
assert that blame and accountability are not necessary ingredients to the
equation though.  I make a distinction between identifying the problem and
blaming someone for the problem.  It doesn't mean that we all don't know
who broke the code.  The one that did will know it, I assure you.  But it
serves no purpose to name him in the monday status meeting other than, as
Jon pointed out, empire building.

The funny thing is, I'm 100% confident in my abilities.  I'll put my bug
count up against anyone.  I just achieved a 1-7 ratio against an MIT MSc CS
with 15 years experience.  I'm not scared of accountability.  I just don't
see the value.  When I play chess, I realize the goal is to mate the king,
not capture high value pieces.  Don't be swayed from the goal.  Keep your
eye on the brass ring.

--- BBBS/LiI v4.01 Flag-5