Accountability

Being accountable means delivering on your promises and taking responsibility for the outcome. Strict scrum process won't make all deadlines magically disappear. Managers can't force accountability on the team. But they can create an environment that encourages trust, ownership, and open dialogue.

Accountability starts with making conscious commitments. To hold someone accountable, you need to agree on expectations. Make them explicit. There shouldn't be any confusion about what the deliverables are. Focus on three key points:

What

What is the scope of your project, what success or definition of done means? Don't leave any space for confusion.

When

Define a date when do you expect to have the goal, project and tasks to be completed, including milestones?

Who

Who is the owner and ultimately committed to do it or oversee the execution? Every task has an owner, or it won't get done.

To hold someone accountable, you need:

Clarify what you're expecting, who is responsible, and when it's due.
Get a firm commitment or re-negotiate the terms if needed.
Show your support, detect early signs of getting off-track.
Have rewards and consequences.
Hold people accountable.
Use mistakes as a learning opportunity.
Lead by example.

Know what you want

As a manager, you have to communicate your expectations clearly. The team shouldn't be guessing what the goals and priorities are. If you leave some room for interpretation, don't be surprised if the outcome doesn't match your expectations. You don't have to spell out every single detail, but the end goal should be explicit.

Deliver the message many times and in different formats: written, visual, verbal. People's attention span is short, and the focus is scarce, not everyone is listening during meetings. Just because you said doesn't mean people heard you. Repetition is the key. Keep repeating your message until it's in people's heads. Repetition is the key. It especially applies to abstract ideas like OKRs, goals, and priorities. They may seem pretty clear in your head, but your team doesn't have all the context. Be mindful that it's more difficult to understand business goals and priorities. Take the time and explain what success means, what role the team plays, and what you expect to have by when.

Get firm commitment

We have many interactions with our team, peers, managers. We attend meetings, have presentations. But too often, we assume that the other person is committing to something. And then we are surprised when they "didn't have a chance to look into it." If an "action item" doesn't have a clearly outlined deliverable, the date next to it, and the owner who agreed to do it, then it's not a commitment. It's better to double-check and make sure the owner commits or doesn't. It's better to hear "no" than assuming vaguely "yes".

They can also push back and re-negotiate the scope or deadline, or ask for more resources. It's all part of the dialogue to get to firm commitment. Even if it's not 100% on your terms, at least you know what to expect and when.

Avoid leaving meetings with a blurry assumption of what the next steps are. Get the commitment by asking:

"As we just discussed, X person will do Y [thing] by Z [date/time], are we in agreement?".

There are three acceptable answers:

Yes
No
I'll check with my team and get back to you by X date.

Many people don't speak up even when they know the ask is not realistic. We all have a different comfort level. Your goal is to create psychological safety, ask questions in a way where it's easier to say "no", push back on the request. A simple follow-up, "Are you sure you can commit to this?" creates a room for alternative options.

Regular Check-ins

If the project is longer than two weeks, there should be regular check-ins. Ideally, you want to break it up into milestones and have a timeline for each of them. This way, it's easier to spot any risks and proactively prevent missed deadlines. Don't wait until the end of the quarter to find out the project is not done.

Check-ins are an opportunity to revisit your team's commitments, remind who is accountable. Also, review the current goals or project status. It's also a chance for you, as a team leader, to offer your support, remove any blockers, provide extra resources, or escalate any issues. Your goal is to manage external expectations, even if they're changing mid-course. Being on top of all projects is one of the responsibilities of a software engineering manager. Find ways to stay on top of things without disrupting everyone with questions. For example, attending standups, doing weekly status reports with team leads, sprint demos.

Rewards and consequences

Consequences don't mean punishment. The latter creates a fear-driven culture. Getting things done through fear of getting fired or losing your bonus can only work short term. Avoid using anxiety as a motivator or enforcement to increase the output. Staying overtime should be a rare exception, not the norm.

Commitments don't exist in a vacuum. Usually, it's a graph of interlinked promises and goals. Different teams are interdependent, even if it's not apparent at first glance. If team A doesn't deliver infrastructure on time, team F won't launch its product before the marketing campaign from team Z goes out. The entire network becomes unstable, affecting the bottom line. And that's one example of a consequence of a missed goal. There is a material impact, a chain reaction triggered by an internal-facing code.

Your team must understand their impact on the bigger goal and the consequences. Even better if the team can help you formulate them.

Trust and integrity are at stake too. If your team lead can't deliver, then chances are you wouldn't trust them again. Nobody likes micromanagement, but that's what happens when trust is damaged. Lack of accountability puts the integrity of your team, department, and even the company at risk. And once it's done is hard to recover. Your team needs to understand why accountability matters. Goals are not just fake deadlines but a promise to deliver on your commitments.

Don't forget to reward your team for exceeding expectations, going the extra mile to get things done. It means different things to different people. The rewards can be more autonomy, more impactful projects, or extra time off to recharge.

Hold people accountable

Broken commitments have few adverse effects:

Broken trust Domino effect on other projects Lost integrity for the team Holding people accountable starts with your company and team culture. If it's ok to miss deadlines, it won't be easy to suddenly expect people to change. The culture should encourage people to have full ownership, be accountable. And push back if asks are unreasonable. It should promote honesty and being realistic when something is or isn't going to get done.

If you let people slip over and over, then you're creating a culture where it's ok to miss your goals. When people see you allow others to cut in line in the grocery store, they will keep doing it. The same applies to OKRs.

You have to confront the issue objectively without getting emotional. Hopefully, you're already having regular 1:1 and team meetings where it's safe to discuss any topics. It's an opportunity to bring up accountability and coach your team. Like any coaching, the goal is to guide the other person to figure out the right answer. You want them to realize why accountability matters and their role in the bigger picture. Discover what blockers and challenges are preventing them from following through. Have them propose some options to resolve the blockers and commit to taking action.

Learning opportunity

Every project has a risk, an unexpected complexity, unknown dependencies. Things happen. Failures are an inevitable part of our work. What's more important than avoiding risks is how you react and recover from slipups.

Less than perfect outcomes are learning opportunities. Use this experience in the future to avoid the mistakes of over-committing or escalating the blockers early in the process. A retrospective is a good way to bring the team together to re-assess the situation. Look back and analyze what could have been done differently.

Once the trust is damaged, it will take some time to get back on track as long as you don't repeat the same mistakes. It may take a few successful projects to prove the lesson is learned.

Lead by example

And last but not least is hold yourself accountable. You can't demand your team to do what you're not willing to do. Leading by example is demonstrating how important it is to you to follow through on your promises. Catch yourself, making even small commitments, and make sure you deliver. Things like "I'll get back to you", "Let's take it offline", "I will look into it" seem harmless, but they mean verbal commitments.

Clarify the requests before agreeing.
Double-check if you have resources and time to do it.
Make sure it aligns with your own goals.
Plan for the unexpected.

Know how to escalate and manage expectations. Including your team, leadership, stakeholders. Keep them informed throughout the process. Nobody likes surprises when it comes to deadlines. Be prepared for the unexpected to happen. Build some flexibility in your plan.

No plan survives contact with the enemy Helmuth von Moltke

Don't make promises to be nice in a meeting. It can be uncomfortable to say "no" and push back on the request. But it will hurt you and the other person in the end if you over commit. If you ever must change your commitment, you can always just ask the other person what your optons are. Don't wait until the last minute.