Continuity of Care

In the health profession, there is the phrase 'Continuity of Care'. It means that whenever the carer of a patient is changed, the level and care remains the same.

In IT projects, all to often managers and team leads change, team members change. It is essential that the same level of care of the software is maintained. By this I mean that the same architecture, vision, and passion is maintained in the code, and that this is successfully transferred when team leads change.

In projects I have seen in the industry, in fact the current project I am on, all too often a project is a muddle of different ideas. There was no continuity of care when team leads changed. Different ideas resulted in various different architectures in the code, half baked ideas and half - half code where one bit of code is being changed to a new way of doing things, but hey guess what the contractor didn't finish the job and now there are 2 different ways to do the same thing. Standards are not maintained. No code reviews happen.

Whenever someone on the team changes, especially the team lead, remember to ensure that the new guy understands the architecture and follows through keeping the code consistent.