http://www.summa-tech.com/blog/2009/05/10/ownership-from-practice-to-policy/ Summa Blog Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:07:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 http://www.summa-tech.com/blog/2009/05/10/ownership-from-practice-to-policy/comment-page-1/#comment-1241 João Del Valle Fri, 22 May 2009 12:10:00 +0000 http://www.summa-tech.com/blog/?p=770#comment-1241 Excellent post! As you said, code ownership is an often overlooked issue in companies with large code bases. Both extremes are really bad situations. In collective ownership, developers have a "don't-look-at-me-I-didn't-change-that-part-it-wasn't-working-before-I-touched-it-must-have-been-that-guy-who-left-the-company" feeling. In the other end, with individual ownership, the turnover is really the bigest issue. That accouting module's guru may be gone for holidays and experience shows <a href="http://ocpsoft.com/best-practices/static-analysis-tools-experience/" rel="nofollow">experts don't usually write documentation</a>, so now the manager is on his own. So, in medio stat virtus, Code Stewardship is probably the right "policy". Again, great post. Excellent post! As you said, code ownership is an often overlooked issue in companies with large code bases. Both extremes are really bad situations. In collective ownership, developers have a “don’t-look-at-me-I-didn’t-change-that-part-it-wasn’t-working-before-I-touched-it-must-have-been-that-guy-who-left-the-company” feeling. In the other end, with individual ownership, the turnover is really the bigest issue. That accouting module’s guru may be gone for holidays and experience shows experts don’t usually write documentation, so now the manager is on his own. So, in medio stat virtus, Code Stewardship is probably the right “policy”. Again, great post.

]]> http://www.summa-tech.com/blog/2009/05/10/ownership-from-practice-to-policy/comment-page-1/#comment-1015 Ben Northrop Wed, 13 May 2009 19:01:53 +0000 http://www.summa-tech.com/blog/?p=770#comment-1015 Great post! The "Individual Code Ownership" model does often contributes to higher quality code, but in some cases it works in reverse - knowing that a developer "owns" a module, he may feel entitled to cut corners (not document, copy-and-paste, etc.)...since there's no one to really check. Code reviews, I think, are most crucial with this model. Great post! The “Individual Code Ownership” model does often contributes to higher quality code, but in some cases it works in reverse - knowing that a developer “owns” a module, he may feel entitled to cut corners (not document, copy-and-paste, etc.)…since there’s no one to really check. Code reviews, I think, are most crucial with this model.

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