March 6, 2019 at 16:33Do you bring bad news to management?
I want to talk about such an important quality as responsibility for mistakes, both my own and my team.
One of the most difficult and unpleasant, in my opinion, decisions for a developer or leader (yes, it’s always difficult), when he finds his mistake on the prod or release just about to be released, go and tell the management - “I was mistaken. The error is on the prod, now I'm trying to understand how this affects users. ”
This is natural and normal, and it should be so, but the sensations are always unpleasant. Moreover, as a leader, I want to hear such news from my team. Do not get me wrong, I’m not a masochist who likes to go to the technical director with such news, but if the mistake is significant, and can cost the company money, then receiving such news is extremely important.
Why should you talk about such cases if you are a developer?
It would seem that the error on the prod needs to be fixed and it’s easy to pour it in the next release, why bother the head?
Control (or visibility) over the situation. The last thing your manager wants is for a senior management to inform him of the problem, and this can also happen if the situation is “silenced”.
In addition, the decision “What is the right thing to do?” Can and should be made by the leader in this situation, this is his level of responsibility. Perhaps the leader will go with a description of this situation to his superior leader, or even to the owner, if the company is small, or the scale of the disaster is large.
It is important to evaluate how large the consequences of errors are.
Just imagine. Financial system, an error was found that relates to mutual settlements between customers and the company. You can also estimate the scale of the error in numbers - right? They made a little mistake, and 1% of clients were charged not 5 rubles, but 5 rubles 15 kopecks?
In this 1% of clients, by coincidence (the law of a sandwich or something else), a large client who is testing your application, so far on small volumes, can get into it. Everyone has errors, but it’s very important how the system works and the company processes them.
Different approaches lead to very different results.
In such situations, the company does not incur so much monetary (although sometimes it also), as reputational losses. People who are especially responsible for this in the company, account managers, marketing, the sales department, in general, those who are paid salaries to ensure that the client is satisfied, can best evaluate and try to mitigate reputation losses. This is not an IT department. More often than not, you may not be aware of such important clients testing the system, but your supervisor may have the necessary information to understand the situation and be able to correctly assess the extent of the problem.
Time to make a decision.As I said, perhaps your supervisor will go with this information above. By notifying him of the situation, you give him extra time to prepare for an unpleasant conversation.
Information is what makes a manager manage efficiently; there is no need to deprive him of this part. You would hardly want to go sailing with a hole in the ship, because the sailors were afraid to report this to the captain? Yes, of course, we are not sailors, but our captain should always be aware of problems in the system or in the upcoming release in order to make the right decisions.
Now about if you are a leader and your team screwed up (sometimes there is a specific person, sometimes it’s a few people) and you are going to bring this news to your management. I had a very good teacher (Thank you, Ruslan) of how to do this and I hope I learned the lessons:
Lesson 1. Do not pull.
The error has already been found and it is very critical, report it immediately as soon as you know. Do not be afraid to disturb the call.
Lesson 2. More facts.
Describe as dryly and correctly as possible. Remember the team brought this news to you, try to save its face, you and your team are one for your leader. Tell us what measures you are taking to correct the error, do not repeat it again.
Estimate the scale (for a critical error, you must first report, and then evaluate the scale and re-inform). Bring information in numbers - count the number of users, the date from which the error occurred, in which cases it worked, and so on. Check if your VIP clients are in the list of those who suffered, give the list to the department that deals with customer management.
Lesson 3. Who specifically made a mistake?
I would try to focus on what happened, and not on who specifically made the mistake. You know your leader, he knows you, but he does not know your team. If you say “Petya Sidorov was mistaken for the 25th time”, it may come to his mind that “Petya” needs to be fired.
In my opinion, such a decision is best left to yourself. I would not dismiss the employee who comes to me with bad news. Perhaps he needs to be trained.
Think about what's wrong with your process, that the error was not caught on time. In an extreme case, you should consider moving to another area of work if the situation repeats, and no changes in the processes help. There should not be sanctions against an employee. So you tell the team to bring me news safely, even very bad news.
Let's go back to the leader. In my opinion, if you know that your leader is not ready to correctly perceive bad news, you will have to take the anger. Yes, I'm not joking. Options:
Other.
In the end, part of the money you are paid also for the fact that you are responsible not so much for yourself as for your team.
This behavior often leads to good results, both for the company and for your career. I was lucky with the leaders and the news was safe to bring as a developer and as a leader. And several times there were times when I realized that it was safer to close the team and say that I screwed up, because I’m unlikely to be fired, but “Petya” can. The leader should have some courage and lack of fear of losing his job, in my opinion the leader’s willingness to enter the market always makes work calmer and better, but this is a topic for another article.
One of the most difficult and unpleasant, in my opinion, decisions for a developer or leader (yes, it’s always difficult), when he finds his mistake on the prod or release just about to be released, go and tell the management - “I was mistaken. The error is on the prod, now I'm trying to understand how this affects users. ”
This is natural and normal, and it should be so, but the sensations are always unpleasant. Moreover, as a leader, I want to hear such news from my team. Do not get me wrong, I’m not a masochist who likes to go to the technical director with such news, but if the mistake is significant, and can cost the company money, then receiving such news is extremely important.
Why should you talk about such cases if you are a developer?
It would seem that the error on the prod needs to be fixed and it’s easy to pour it in the next release, why bother the head?
Why is bad news to your supervisor?
Control (or visibility) over the situation. The last thing your manager wants is for a senior management to inform him of the problem, and this can also happen if the situation is “silenced”.
In addition, the decision “What is the right thing to do?” Can and should be made by the leader in this situation, this is his level of responsibility. Perhaps the leader will go with a description of this situation to his superior leader, or even to the owner, if the company is small, or the scale of the disaster is large.
It is important to evaluate how large the consequences of errors are.
Just imagine. Financial system, an error was found that relates to mutual settlements between customers and the company. You can also estimate the scale of the error in numbers - right? They made a little mistake, and 1% of clients were charged not 5 rubles, but 5 rubles 15 kopecks?
In this 1% of clients, by coincidence (the law of a sandwich or something else), a large client who is testing your application, so far on small volumes, can get into it. Everyone has errors, but it’s very important how the system works and the company processes them.
- Rules backdating the amount and returns money to the account? Does the report look like there was nothing?
- Silently returns to the account 15 cents and this can be seen in a separate motion
- He sends an apology letter and a detailed description of what went wrong, where it can be seen in the reports, where the adjustment was made, all this is visible and transparent.
Different approaches lead to very different results.
In such situations, the company does not incur so much monetary (although sometimes it also), as reputational losses. People who are especially responsible for this in the company, account managers, marketing, the sales department, in general, those who are paid salaries to ensure that the client is satisfied, can best evaluate and try to mitigate reputation losses. This is not an IT department. More often than not, you may not be aware of such important clients testing the system, but your supervisor may have the necessary information to understand the situation and be able to correctly assess the extent of the problem.
Time to make a decision.As I said, perhaps your supervisor will go with this information above. By notifying him of the situation, you give him extra time to prepare for an unpleasant conversation.
Information is what makes a manager manage efficiently; there is no need to deprive him of this part. You would hardly want to go sailing with a hole in the ship, because the sailors were afraid to report this to the captain? Yes, of course, we are not sailors, but our captain should always be aware of problems in the system or in the upcoming release in order to make the right decisions.
For the head
Now about if you are a leader and your team screwed up (sometimes there is a specific person, sometimes it’s a few people) and you are going to bring this news to your management. I had a very good teacher (Thank you, Ruslan) of how to do this and I hope I learned the lessons:
Lesson 1. Do not pull.
The error has already been found and it is very critical, report it immediately as soon as you know. Do not be afraid to disturb the call.
Lesson 2. More facts.
Describe as dryly and correctly as possible. Remember the team brought this news to you, try to save its face, you and your team are one for your leader. Tell us what measures you are taking to correct the error, do not repeat it again.
Estimate the scale (for a critical error, you must first report, and then evaluate the scale and re-inform). Bring information in numbers - count the number of users, the date from which the error occurred, in which cases it worked, and so on. Check if your VIP clients are in the list of those who suffered, give the list to the department that deals with customer management.
Lesson 3. Who specifically made a mistake?
I would try to focus on what happened, and not on who specifically made the mistake. You know your leader, he knows you, but he does not know your team. If you say “Petya Sidorov was mistaken for the 25th time”, it may come to his mind that “Petya” needs to be fired.
In my opinion, such a decision is best left to yourself. I would not dismiss the employee who comes to me with bad news. Perhaps he needs to be trained.
Think about what's wrong with your process, that the error was not caught on time. In an extreme case, you should consider moving to another area of work if the situation repeats, and no changes in the processes help. There should not be sanctions against an employee. So you tell the team to bring me news safely, even very bad news.
Let's go back to the leader. In my opinion, if you know that your leader is not ready to correctly perceive bad news, you will have to take the anger. Yes, I'm not joking. Options:
- We (the team) were mistaken and this led to ...
- An error was found in the code and this led to ...
Other.
In the end, part of the money you are paid also for the fact that you are responsible not so much for yourself as for your team.
In custody
This behavior often leads to good results, both for the company and for your career. I was lucky with the leaders and the news was safe to bring as a developer and as a leader. And several times there were times when I realized that it was safer to close the team and say that I screwed up, because I’m unlikely to be fired, but “Petya” can. The leader should have some courage and lack of fear of losing his job, in my opinion the leader’s willingness to enter the market always makes work calmer and better, but this is a topic for another article.