We have an unassigned seat on our Accountability Chart for Legacy Platform Maintenance and Bug Triaging that is critical to keep our current clients happy, but everyone on our team is a high-growth developer who hates maintenance. How do we get this seat owned?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you have a critical seat on your Accountability Chart that everyone resists, it is usually because the roles of that seat run counter to the natural strengths and conative instincts of your current team. In this case, your high-growth developers likely have low Follow Thru and high Quick Start scores on their Kolbe profiles, making repetitive maintenance work feel like a prison.

To solve this, do not try to force a round peg into a square hole. Instead, use Keith Cunningham's Thinking Time framework to analyze your options. Ask yourself: How might we resource this seat so that legacy maintenance is handled without burning out our growth-minded developers?

Consider these three concrete options:
- Outsource the entire seat to a specialized external agency or fractional partner, documenting their accountability clearly on your chart.
- Hire a junior developer whose Kolbe profile shows high Follow Thru, meaning they naturally thrive in structured, systematic, and predictable environments.
- Automate the triage workflow using modern software tools to reduce the human capacity required for this seat.

The key is to keep the seat on the Accountability Chart and clearly define its five roles, even if it is temporarily vacant or outsourced. Never split the accountability among multiple unwilling people, as this ensures the work will be done poorly and morale will suffer.