Research says that 75 percent of employers gauge collaboration and teamwork as ‘very important.’ Cooperation regarding software development is far more effective than it may initially appear. It frequently calls for specialized professionals in particular sub-disciplines to work on specific features.
Collaborating with others encourages the cross-pollination of ideas and ultimately speeds up software development. The growth and success of any software company depend on its development team’s satisfaction, motivation, and effectiveness. Resultantly, your business can enjoy a boost in productivity and ensure desirable outcomes.
But what are the effective ways of managing software teams? Let’s delve into these details to find out how you can do it without any hassle;
5 Best Practices for Managing Software Teams
Let’s delve into the time-tested and proven practices for managing software teams effectively:
Facilitate Open Communication
Open communication is the first step to onboard the expertise and concerns of all stakeholders involved. Software teams handle complex problems. They have to manage a huge flow of information which isn’t possible without team collaboration.
For example, some teams are working on developing a gaming project. All characters, themes, animations, and even codes are ready to be integrated. What if communication and collaboration between operation and developer teams terminate at some point; would that project be successful by any means? Simply No!
To facilitate open communication, you can introduce the following;
- Clarity of Ideas
Ambiguity in thoughts and ideas is a significant issue leaders usually encounter while managing software teams. This not only kills productivity but also compromises the quality of the result. Bridge the gap between teams and let the UI experts collaborate with UX engineers to eradicate potential pitfalls. Allow them to ask questions to ensure that every possible option is appropriately taken onboard before moving towards a final decision.
- Feedback Loop
One of the biggest people makes when managing software teams is restricting people from sharing ideas. It’s vital to build a mechanism where everyone is allowed to analyze and respond to happenings in their respective domains. Even introduce a secret backend channel where employees can share their concerns.
Just opening these ways is not enough at all. You have to value all feedback and appreciate positive input from team members. Even if you’re working with remote teams across different time zones, allow them to give their input at their ease.
- Evaluate Results
After project completion, call a meeting to discuss every aspect of the project. What went wrong, what was good, and what needs to be improved, and evaluate all these points critically. Reward high-achievers and arrange training opportunities for employees to ensure their appropriate grooming.
Introduce the Right Tools
The need for software team collaboration tools is increasing. These tools help in sharing information and facilitate communication between team members. When looking for new tools, it is important to understand your team’s requirements.
Several factors need to be considered when selecting a tool for collaboration :
- Size of the organization
- Size of the project
- Type of project (i.e., agile or waterfall)
- Culture of your organization
After analyzing these factors, you must check various options based on certain parameters for managing software teams effectively.
- Analytics
The tool must possess an internal analytics mechanism to graphically summarize every important aspect in a single go. It facilitates easy tracking and management of tasks.
- Automation
Automation is another vital factor when choosing a tool. It should be capable enough to automatically notify members regarding any assignment or task. While trying to reach the final outcome, software teams usually forget some tasks, which can hurt the overall progress. This is where automation provides the cure.
- Tracking Previous Projects
Software development projects aren’t just one-time shows. You can’t throw away the codes once the project is finalized. Whenever a bug arises, or an issue pops up, you must go back and see the previous code. No developer is efficient enough to remember everything about a year’s old coding. So, your tool should be able to keep track of all these codes and ensure their availability whenever the need arises.
This is where agile project management tools can offer you help. These allow teams to collaborate more effectively, making it easy to share information, track progress, and manage multiple projects simultaneously. Agile project management tools offer security, automation, and easy navigation for managing various tasks.
Introduce Playbooks
Collaboration is an integral part of managing your team members. But, in many organizations, it isn’t easy to get all the stakeholders on the same page. Even during the execution of projects, team members are usually stuck at some points and can’t figure out how to proceed or who to consult. This demands clarity of organizational structure and comprehensive documentation.
The solution is playbooks. You can develop playbooks for every department, like finance, sales, marketing, and development, or even the organization’s introduction.
You can even develop comprehensive documentation for a single project. That’ll give everyone on your team access to information about the project and its deliverables — even when they are not in the same place or time zone. Teams can use it to create roadmaps, plan for meetings and keep each other informed as changes occur during development.
Thus playbooks can facilitate overall working mechanisms, while project-specific documentation can streamline the operations of a particular project.
Ensure Quick Feedback
Agile project management is a collaborative process that requires constant feedback from team members, customers, and stakeholders. Feedback plays a crucial role in team improvement. In a survey, nearly 60% of participants said they would prefer feedback on a daily or weekly basis, and that percentage rose to 72% for workers under 30 years of age, according to PwC.
More than 75% of those surveyed think feedback is important. Less than 30% of respondents claimed they receive feedback from clients or consumers, even though about 45% of respondents also value it.
For instance, if a team works on a big project, everything goes smoothly. After completion, some stakeholder or customer comes in and says it’s not up to the expectation. Won’t that be a technical disaster? Now, look from another side, if customers or stakeholders review every stage of the project, then there are infinitesimal chances of falling into a pitfall.
Agile project management encourages fast feedback from customers and team members to improve the quality of the developed product. Feedback helps determine whether the output meets customer needs or requires to be modified at any stage in the process.
Provide Effective Leadership
Strong leadership creates the environment for productive teamwork. Leaders should support an environment where developers can try new things and fail without feeling guilty. Teams can work together to find innovative solutions when they are free.
If the team leader discourages open communication and gives no time for experimentation, team members will be less motivated to experiment and discuss solutions. Loss of creativity would be one of the significant drawbacks of poor leadership.
Conclusion
Collaboration in software development calls for both technical and organizational abilities. It has elements about getting along with people and properly using the appropriate tools.
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Originally published at https://blog.ones.com on December 14, 2022.
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