Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Command and control

Smart people does not like to be controlled. And also can not be controlled.

People who close to work can make better decision than most of the managers.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Comments on how to Manage developers

Below are some ideas and experience I want to blog about how to be a good developer manager

1. Manager is not about managing people, no one want to be managed. Good manager should know manage himself first, create a better environment for developers to manage themselves too. Lead by example and show people the direction, let others to follow themselves.

2. You have to know your team better.
a. Knows who is key people in the group, identify the key people is very important, you will know whom you should invest more time and money into.
b. Knows who is the expert but not a team player, who perform best inside a team, who perform best individual.
c. Knows each one's color (color theory)
d. Understand your team's ability and capacity. Do not try to stretch too much, as it will demotivate people.

3. Treat people with respect, never manipulate other people. If you do not want others do to you, do not do it to other people.

4. Social activity, such as lunch each Friday together if it is possible.
5. Learning activity, ask one developer to do a presentation each week. Helps to exchange the knowledge between developers.

6. Provide best equipment to developers will help them to high productivity.

7. Provide best working environments you can get, do not underestimate any complains about desk, noise, or other small things, as that could cause big issues to some people.

8. Prepare some group contest, or mind games once a month? or two weeks to enhance team work.

9. Only assign 80% of your capacity most of the time, if some developers tell you they are not in the mood, then you have room to give them some time to step back. Making sure they are working in high spirit. As developers productivity are not measured by hours.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Hiring strategy

hire-above-the-mean (or Lake Wobegon). Always hire people better than yourself.(???)

a. Always hire developers better than we have currently (IQ + EQ) at the same level.
b. When we measure the skill, we also need to consider the future grow.
c. For Senior position, skill + experience = 60%, EQ = 20%, 20%= future grow
For Intermediate position, skill + experience = 40%, EQ = 30%, 30%= future grow
For Junior position, skill + experience = 20%, EQ = 30%, 50%= future grow

Low EQ means low team spirit. Depends on the position, some senior position which does not require high EQ, and those experts can and prefer individually, if we have those positions, then EQ is not really required.

Reference below link for more details.

http://lifeofaprogrammanager.blogspot.com/2006/06/good-reading-for-development-managers.html