One of the common components of software engineering culture is the shared build. A team of people work together to produce a piece of software, and on a regular basis, often daily, that software is built for the team. One of the cardinal sins in this culture is breaking the build: changing the software so that it can no longer be built. To punish the offender, and provide a bonding experience for the innocent victims on the team, a ritual develops around how to treat the offender.

At a previous startup, a totem figure would appear on the culprit’s desk. At Kubi, we’ve taken to using ordinary caution tape to identify the problem source.

An additional benefit of these tribal behaviors is that it gets people talking about the process. When opinions differ on the severity of an infraction, people will talk about whether the punishment was deserved or not. Without a visible and derisive consequence, the process failure may not have been discussed further once the build was working again.