How to Manage Software Development

What the world needs is yet another blog post on how to manage software development, so why not write it myself I ask. Unable to find a good reason to stop here, I’ll give it a shot. If you continue to read, you and you alone will be responsible for anything you might learn.

There are books, graduate courses, and no end to rambling blogs, so I’ll shoot for brevity and clarity here in Part 1.

  1. Know Your Team
    Computers do not yet write software all that well by themselves, so you’re stuck managing the people. Your process or you dictate what they will work on and, by virtue of time constraints imposed, how they will work on it; this is the essence of management.
     
  2. Be Decisive and Take Action
    Collaboration is a meaningless waste of time unless it is followed by real decision and actions that lead to positive results. If you cannot make decisions and act upon them, you are a researcher; you are not a manager.
     
  3. Be Honest and Fair
    If you say one thing to your team on one day and deny having said it the next day, your team will lose confidence in you and rebuilding that trust may not be possible, so choose your words and promises carefully. And if you make a mistake, admit it readily and apologize where appropriate. Your team will see this as a mark of a true leader.
     
  4. Demand Accountability
    When you assert a process rule, enforce it. Hold team members accountable. Start with gentle reminders and further training but do not allow repeat offenders to skate without consequence. If you do, your process is not a process and it will fail.
     
  5. Eliminate Needless Meetings
    Developers generally hate meetings with good reason. Most meetings lack an agenda, lead to no discernable action items, and there is rarely a copy of the minutes minutes and action items distributed to attendees. Most software development requires long, uninterrupted periods of time to effectively solve problems and complete complex tasks. Useless meetings in the middle of the day can ruin a developer’s entire day, throwing his productivity into a spiral, so group meetings into a single day where possible to eliminate or reduce the disruptive effects.
     
  6. Review Everyone’s Work
    You may not understand the code, but having a developer walk you through the code, discussing the decisions made and showing off just a little will go a long way toward educating you and inspiring your developer. Review and discuss documentation, designs and test plans with interest. Spend the time to learn from and guide your team.
     
  7. Get Yourself Out of the Meetings Cyclone
    Decline a leadership training or management committee meeting from time to time in order to do some real managing. Remember, the word “manage” has its root in manus (hand). If you don’t put your hands on it, you can’t possibly manage it.
     
  8. Create and Shepherd Processes
    Everyone knows how to manage and can do so if you give them a process that establishes guidelines for what information should be considered, what decision making process should result, and how those decisions will become actions within the constructs of the process you have created.

Well, that’s enough for part one. More on the same topic later.