The "five whys" productivity technique
i&#x27;m currently the only developer on a project.  i now have ... 3-5 &#x27;managers&#x27; (depending on how you count) involved in planning&#x2F;direction.  PM on &quot;my&quot; side, PM on &quot;client&#x27;s&quot; side, PO on &quot;client&#x27;s side&quot;, and... some other &#x27;higher ups&#x27; on each side that drop in now and then.<p>Recently, they&#x27;ve instituted formal RCA process with &quot;5 whys&quot; and... every &#x27;why&#x27; ultimately ends up being <i>my</i> fault.  Now... they&#x27;re not <i>saying</i> &#x27;fault&#x27; directly, but no matter how you cut it, I forgot to add another test, or I didn&#x27;t document something clearly enough, or I forgot some error checking, or... I forgot to remind someone of something or... whatever.<p>&quot;Oh, don&#x27;t take it personally!  It&#x27;s not just you, we&#x27;re a team&quot;.  But.. I&#x27;m the only one doing the work that is breaking, and I&#x27;m the only one fixing it, and every documented RCA lives on, pointing out that <i>I</i> made mistakes, and each document is delivered to 12 stakeholders every time there&#x27;s a mistake, and mine is the only name on it attached to the &#x27;root cause&#x27;.<p>&quot;What lessons can we learn from this?&quot;  That we can&#x27;t sustain this pace, and adding more managers is not helping the situation in any way.<p>I&#x27;ve been saying for a while we&#x27;re formalizing way too much stuff, and that most of the practices they&#x27;re bringing in from other places <i>all</i> had the baseline of &quot;more developers than managers&quot; in a team environment.  I&#x27;m a team of one, and processes designed for teams of 3-5-10 aren&#x27;t appropriate, imo.