by Lee Johnson (CTO @ G2i)

I have led more development team than I can count in the last 18 years and I still remember the developers that I worked with that displayed the 2 key ingredients of urgency and ownership.

Of course, code quality is important. Clean code is easier to maintain, share with the team, and has fewer bugs - but code quality can be learned. One of my all time best employees had abysmal code quality in the beginning but now he has written books, taught React to engineering teams in Silicon Valley, and is a lead engineer and advocate at Amazon. He accomplished all of these things (including learning top notch coding practices) because of unwavering ugency and ownership.

Ownership:

  1. the act, state, or right of possessing something.

Ownership in development means that when you are assigned or take on a task you see it through to the end. You take pride in the quality and timeliness of the completion of the task. If there is a road block or issue impeding your progress you find a way around it or find someone that can help you but you do not leave it alone until it is resolved or you are waiting for a blocker to be removed that you cannot remove yourself.

Urgency:

  1. importance requiring swift action.
  2. an earnest and persistent quality; insistence.

Urgency in development means that the completion of a task is important to you. You have an idea in your head how long an item should take and you try to meet or beat that internal estimate. The clock is always ticking. When things take longer than you think they should you tell someone why or ask for help. Urgency should never be abused. Be realistic with your internal estimate and adjust & communicate as necessary. Urgency doesn't mean working overtime, it means the normal hours you are working have purpose and focus.

Wrapped up in both of these is, of course, communication. You cannot be a productive member of any team without open and regular communication. Ownership and urgency often lend themselves to facilitate communication. As mentioned above, when you own something and take pride in it you want to tell someone when it goes well and you want help when it's not. The same goes for urgency. When the timeline is important you want to tell someone when a goal is complete or you need more time.