Single accountability & your website
Last year we had a client call about a bug that a small number of their customers were experiencing in checkout on their ecommerce store. In frustration, they said, “I just want a single point of ultimate accountability.”
I completely understand the motivation behind this.
However, the problem with this thinking when it comes to websites is that a single, mono-technology system does not exist.
Today’s websites are a collection of server code, platforms, custom UX, databases, and more. While your customers hopefully experience your website as a single, unified experience – there will never be one technology powering it “under the hood.” Some technology providers (ie: Apple) & SaaS platforms (ie: Shopify) might lead you to believe its one system - but really they have many dependencies on an ecosystem of technology in all cases.
Websites are built around many interconnected technologies. You might be shocked by the sheer number of different technologies that it takes to deliver a simple web page. Each of those technologies were written by different companies, or open source contributors, with different levels of developer skills, and built for a “typical” use case – not necessarily your use case.
Just look at the Fastly outage that brought down major internet sites a few weeks ago.
For example, these are the technologies in use on our Bear Group website — not one of which we provided any code for, but they work in concert to present our website publicly:
To this soup, we added our own custom front-end design, layouts, and content to bring our website, beargroup.com, to life.
In addition, we layer in some basic marketing technologies, including:
This is pretty typical of any website — it’s a landscape of interconnected systems.
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Think of your website like your car
When it comes to your website, you are ultimately responsible for the technology that is powering your business.
Think of it like your car. You are responsible for the car you drive, its regular maintenance, following the rules of the road, and you’re responsible for repairs when it breaks. There is no requirement to get a license that you have much understanding on how a car works, or know anything about what is going on under the hood.
You may have no idea about that carburetor recall, or what a carburetor even does, or that Toyota buys that part from a supplier who specializes in carburetors. So you take your car to a mechanic, they diagnose and determine it's a carb problem. They might report that to the manufacturer and realize there’s a recall on it and perhaps the manufacturer might be able to fix it or even contact the carburetor maker to get you a new one.
You could be angry at your mechanic (who likely charged you an arm and a leg to sort out your carburetor issue), but most likely you’d chalk it up to the cost of owning a car. Ask any car dealer, post-sale services are their #1 revenue generator.
Websites usually work as they should and get your business where it needs to go. But when it’s not working as it should, you need a reliable developer (mechanic) to help locate where the problem is occurring.
Your developer needs to have good visibility into all the different systems and understand how those highly-intertwined systems are working together. This doesn’t mean they are singularly accountable for them — they usually didn’t write them, if they did write them they should fix it. Look to your web developers to help triage and isolate what component in the system is causing the issue — and that is an incredibly valuable service.
Rather than trying to push for a single point of accountability, understand what systems are in use on your website, so you can develop a Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed approach to managing the system.
Conclusion
It’s an interconnected world we live in, and your best bet is having a mechanic who understands that and can help guide you. The idea of single accountability is a logical fallacy.
Instead, count on your guides and lean on them for advice. Know that they can help navigate, because they can see more deeply in your systems to get at where issues are occurring. And then, ultimately, get to the right component of your technology that maybe isn’t playing well with others, and fix it or work with the team who built it on a fix.
About the Author
Greg Bear had a front-row seat as the internet became the center of the economy. He built his first web page in 1994, led startups through the Seattle internet boom, and launched Bear Group in 2007. His dedication to exceptional digital experiences and client service has remained central throughout.
