Working in a commercial environment

[robdashnash]

I have been working in a commercial environment for 2 years now and I am keen to find out how others inherit existing projects and keep their reputation protected.

I find that touching a project for about a day makes me responsible for the whole project's code base, and thus get the blame for bugs that someone else wrote.

Further, if I take on a new task and the Application breaks because of code written elsewhere, it also looks bad on me. Making excuses like "it wasn't code that I wrote", doesn't wash with management.

Does anyone have any advice or a system, such as "Give me that in written format and I will get on with it" ?

Rob
iOS Developer

 

[Tomorrow]

I don't develop software, but I am an engineer and a project manager.

If I inherit a project, it becomes mine. I become responsible for it. If there's a mistake, it doesn't really matter whether I'm the one that made it; it's my responsibility now. That means I take the necessary steps to correct it, I smooth things over with the client, etc.

I don't know if this is normal in the world of software but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me; just the way the world works.

 

[Zombie Acorn]

Pretty normal if your management is clueless about what you are doing. I try not to take any side projects at work anymore, I just work on my own personal stuff at home.

I once did a personal project and proposed it at work, it got shot down by management, just for them to propose the same thing themselves 2 years later.

 

[Southern Dad]

As senior executive management, I often have to handle portions of projects rather than the entire project. This involves delegation and coordination. I have found that emails are a great backup. Over the years, I found that communication was a step that a lot of people are missing. Now when I have a meeting, I send out an email, to everyone who was in the room, shortly after, just to make certain everything was clear. Let me use something from your situation or close.

John,

I appreciate you bringing me up to speed on the company webpage project.

From our conversation this morning, I understand that stumbling blocks that you need my help with is writing the JAVA code for the moving window. On this project, you will remain the project leader and I'll be coordinating with you. In order to meet your scheduling, you need my portion of code to you no later than XX/XX/XXXX. My time is scheduled pretty tight but I'm certain that I an assist you on this. I will keep you informed of progress.

Thank you for this opportunity to work with you and your team.

Steve

If questions are raised at a later time, I type my response right on the email. Not a throw it in your face, but a reminder email.

John,

Again, I want to thank you for the opportunity to coordinate with you on this. It is my understanding that there are further difficulties with the webpage and you will need me to prepare some additional code to fix some of the other sections. Please keep in mind that I've got several projects going on myself but I am sure that we can work out all the details to keep this on track.

Steve

I copy myself on these emails and I have a rule set up in Outlook that will automatically move them to a folder called DAILY JOURNAL and mark them read.