How to Respect Developers' Time
Focused on Productivity (Part 1 of 2)
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
Depending on the project and technical characteristics, there might be an ongoing struggle between the project’s leadership and the development members. There are multiple different styles of leadership in IT Management: Some are more focused on the political aspects which are most noticeable in big corporations; other styles are more focused on the project’s commercial targets when is the project manager a driver for selling the product or project to multiple clients; technical project manager who understands what is under the hood and is very close and plays a critical role in the technical decision-making; and finally a hybrid of project manager that is a combination of all these types.
The following reasons are the topics any project manager should be aware of to make sure the development team has the best conditions to do the work, no matter the leadership style. Because of the length of this article, this topic will be covered in two-part articles.
5 - Meetings, meetings, meetings!
It’s understandable that in leadership positions, it becomes normal to have an agenda filled with meetings. It is also understandable to make an ongoing effort to reduce the load of these meetings, optimize the calendar, and be lean on the events and meetings. The problem is when the meetings become the leader’s main KPI for feeling productive, especially when the leaders drag the teams for hours-long sessions.
Understandably, a Manager should be aware of the project's status at all times. However, this needs to be done without wasting the team’s time. Having a room full of people just to update the Manager is not productive. In these scenarios, the Manager is part of the problem, and people are doing nothing instead of actively working on the project milestones.
If a Manager needs to schedule a call with developers, he or she needs to be mindful of the time these meetings are held. IT Software Engineering is a heavy-concentration task. There is a cost to scheduling a 30-minute meeting in the middle of the afternoon. It will break the developer’s concentration and their thought processes. Is preferable to schedule early in the morning, immediately before or after the lunch break, or at the end of the day. The goal is to provide the development team with straight hours in the day for them to concentrate.
4 - Deadlines and important project dates not reinforced
Producing the project plans can be a very heavy process. It involves a series of activities, compromises with different stakeholders, and an in-depth view that only Project Managers have. Once the plan is produced and communicated, is normal for the PM to feel that a huge milestone is fulfilled and it’s time to pass the execution for the team and be close to anticipating potential challenges. While the manager is aware of the different project milestones dates and compromises, and even if these are communicated to the team several times, the developers might not be attentive to all the details and their work can suffer the consequences.
IT Software Engineering is a funny area. There are a multitude of different personality types among the development teams. A multitude of reasons and situations may occur in the project, but the important is to continually remind the team about the upcoming project milestones. The reflex that a Project Manager might have about risk and schedule management might be completely different from the rest of the team. The lack of milestone awareness may impact the code base, technical decisions done with wrong assumptions, etc. The leader should not assume that if an important milestone is communicated to the team, it will be always remembered by them. I have so many examples of reminding key team members about the project milestones and why I am pushing hard about a specific topic.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur