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Pop quiz:
What do the Ghostbusters, Scooby Doo, and the A-Team all have in common?
They’re effective teams that found success by emphasizing productivity and efficiency … in their own special way, of course.
Today, the need for innovation and growth within the software product world has never been greater. Coupled with the growing demand for solutions driven by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities, the need to be more like the Ghostbusters (ie: productive and efficient) has never been higher for software development teams across the board. After all, when your customers ask themselves, “Who’re you gonna call?” you want the answer to be YOU!
Managing your software development team in a way that achieves this high productivity is an ever-changing art that evolves as new external factors, such as a pandemic or, say, a giant paranormal marshmallow man terrorizing downtown, are introduced. (We wrote here on how to manage a team through a pandemic).
As the climate changes in this vertical, executives need to be cognizant of the best ways to manage their software teams.
4 Tips for Managing a Software Development Team
Break Down the Silos
Whether you’re trying to coordinate the capture of a mischievous specter via proton packs and a ghost trap or making last minute changes to a UX design, teams across all industries strive to have good communication.
Software companies can have many teams that are all trying to reach the same goal. Your developers need to collaborate with all teams involved to ensure the requirements and specifications are being covered while also taking steps to build things to last — that is, developing software components and services that are reusable. (Hint: If you haven’t read our blog about the power of reusability in software product design, you should. Reusability = ROI)
By breaking down the typical business unit silos, teams can be more effective with increased visibility and transparency of all work streams surrounding the product, customer, and company as a whole. This may mean involving your developers in customer calls, envisioning and design sessions, and sales presentations. By doing this, developers will feel more empowered to make decisions that drive ROI. While it’s tempting to insulate your development team from some of these activities, thinking it might improve their focus, this is usually counterproductive. Your team wants to deliver for you and your customers — involve them in this and you’ll improve communication, motivation, and output at the same time.
Distill Information from Management to Your Technical Team
This is a more specific way to say that there needs to be full transparency and communication into the current development work streams at hand. With so many engineers working remotely and sometimes spread across multiple projects, ensuring your team is utilizing the appropriate platforms and tools is key to successful and efficient development teams.
A critical piece to this is ensuring your technical team understands WHY they are building what they are building, and how it contributes to the overall alignment of company goals. Issue tracking tools, idea portals, Agile methodology, and team-based communication platforms are the bare minimum that need to be explored when maintaining clear communication and high visibility throughout a team of developers. These platforms can give clear information from top to bottom on the reason for development efforts and where any action item stands relative to the overall project.
Appoint a Product Owner and Crystalize your Product Design
Whether it be product updates, client specific modifications, or asking Shaggy and Scooby to go find help, there is always pressure to complete development as quickly as possible. It’s all too easy to jump from an idea or directive on a whiteboard to pounding out code at a keyboard. A common mistake is to believe that this is what being Agile is all about. But in reality, this approach inevitably leads to missed expectations, poor quality, and slipped final release dates.
The reason for this is often simply that there is no assigned Product Owner — one person (not a committee) must be given the responsibility to crystalize the product design and define EXACTLY what a product or feature should do. This isn’t about look or feel or UX design — this is about owning the data and functionality a product must manage to be commercially successful. As Hannibal says, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Well, the Product Owner owns the plan and is accountable for its success.
While you should want to ensure efficiency, the quality of the development at hand always needs to be at the forefront of any software process. This starts with well-organized and responsible timing from the Product Owner for all key milestones, and open and free collaboration with your development teams during the entire development lifecycle.
Teams that set clear goals for each developer empower them to do their job in the most effective way possible. Ensuring that the development team understands the complexity nuance required for success is the first step to resilient, high-quality code.
Listen and Be Available
The most significant asset to any development team are the developers themselves. These engineers are high functioning, highly intelligent individuals who are experts in creative and critical thinking. Leverage this! There are very few groups across all industries that have any of the above attributes, let alone all of them.
Having open dialogue with your development team and encouraging feedback is a great way to not only further the development initiatives, but it will also establish good relationships built on professional trust. As we know, specifications and requirements can sometimes be very unclear or ever-changing, having a development team that is enabled to speak their mind on how to address the task at hand will increase productivity and efficiency.
Managing Technical Teams for the Long-Term
The technology industry is in a unique spot right now to thrive. Many companies across the globe are going through digital transformations and need their products to have modern capabilities in order to beat out their competition. With this demand, it has never been more important to improve the culture of your R&D organization.
If the past couple years has taught us anything, it is that leaders need to always be improving their management skills by adapting to the current environment.
While every development team is different in their own way, these 4 tips can be applied to any group in the technology industry.
Looking for some help with your software development? We help businesses develop better enterprise software. Learn more about Modularis and what we have to offer.