5 Tips to Manage Software Development Teams like a Pro

Naturally, when we kick off a new software development project, we all intend it to be a success. However, for it to be a success, we need a strong core, and that is the custom software development team. While the truth could not be denied that all teams differ when it comes to work style and the unique internal ecosystem, there are a few common elements to it.

We expect the team to consist of highly skilled and experienced individuals. However, it’s not the only prerequisite. To make a truly effective development team, there are some things to take into consideration.

Manage the Software Development Team like a Pro

In any custom software development company, team performance is vital to project success. If you’re a project manager, you could manage the team like a pro. How? Let’s explore.

1. Keep a consistent schedule of the software development project:

Having a consistent and realistic schedule for software development is important to meet the deadlines and increase our success rate. When things are predictable, scheduling is a breeze. Software projects, unfortunately, are typically dynamic, in which requirements and resources often fluctuate. When tasks are longer than expected, or there are new sets of requirements passed, the schedules could rapidly go into disarray.

Every project requires a specific duration and completion time, but it should be intelligently mapped out. Make sure steps are scheduled in a way that enables unexpected change of plans or delays, instead of setting ambitious dates that are difficult to meet. Furthermore, avoid aggressive scheduling that needs individual developers to simultaneously handle several projects that could lead to inferior quality, inefficiency, and burnout.

2. Make sure to facilitate effective communication:

Inferior communication could jeopardize a project on a lot of levels and could derail and entire initiative easily if left unchecked. A project manager, for example, could forget to check in with remote developers regularly, which could leave them vulnerable to mistakes and disengaged. They could also fail to connect with the business units adequately, which depend on the software, increasing the chance that the project won’t meet the needs and leaving major stakeholders out.

Thus, communication and coordination are hallmarks of an effective team manager and project. Make a consistent and robust effort to make the teams connected, maintain a steady dialogue with all business units, and avoid neglecting any personnel.

3. Steer clear of overly rigid processes:

Successful software project depends on an orderly execution of activities, particularly in dealing with complex scenarios. As a project manager for instance, you may have to make and implement a standardized process to deal with a great number of change requests from users. Nevertheless, mandating unclearly justified processes imposes big limitations, particularly as software teams face more demands for flexibility, agility, and responsiveness.

Project managers or coordinators should resist the urge to just create new processes each time a process comes up. Rather, the first thing that they should do is to determine the root cause of the issue, particularly since adding a new process could only exacerbate issues. New processes, for example, would not help a faltering development team to hit goals if the project requirements weren’t sufficiently made clear in the first place.

4. Evaluate priorities with care:

Every task that the project manager passes to developers takes limited resources, particularly the energy and time of the team to reach project goals. Successful prioritization will depend on the understanding of the manager of both the business and stakeholder needs.

Frequently changing or poorly understood priorities could lead to inferior decisions scheduling, frustrated customers, and dissatisfied stakeholder. A manager should have a clear picture of priorities and of course establish priorities from the very beginning with stakeholders, business leaders, and members of the development team.

5. Watch for knowledge silos:

Bringing certain specialists to the team is helpful when a project demands complex and niche capabilities. Nevertheless, although they may not realize it, a lot of managers maintain an unhealthy dependence on the specialists and their expertise. It’s hard for team leaders to assess the progress of a project accurately if they’re not in tune with the work done.

Most of all, it would severely limp the team if a specialist is transferred to another project, or will leave the company altogether. Project managers should limit their reliance on specialists and prepare to fill the gap in case the specialist leaves.

If at all possible, get rid of information silos via knowledge-sharing and cross-training initiatives that help developers learn from the specialists and sharpen their skills. If you think that you’re relying on large numbers of silos or specialists, it would be smart to critically check out if the project is overly complex or ambitious.

Software Development Manager—Duties and Responsibilities

1. Create, manage, and prepare the best development team.
2. Provide technical and project management leadership for each aspect of software.
3. Guide, coach, and mentor developers and engineers.
4. Supervise architecture and lead efforts to create a technical roadmap of all software projects.
5. Prepare lifecycle for various projects, including research, design, development, testing, and evaluation, together with product management delivery.
6. Develop relations with current and prospective internal customers to interpret all requirements.
7. Learn and display how products add value to respective organizations.
8. Ensure top quality design reviews that attain business goals.
9. Supervise the allocation of resources to ensure the attainment of apt organization and personnel development goals.
10. Managing and executing software development projects from beginning to end.
11. Establish and stimulate development processes and standards, together with best practices to deliver high quality and scalable software.
12. Project evaluation, development and updating of schedules, as well as supervising the status of a project.
13. Effectively coordinate with all members of the team and hold regular team meetings as well.

Conclusion

To professionally manage a software development team, the key to retain top developers is by treating them well and managing them fairly.