Software Engineering Team Management #1

Image by kqedquest via Flickr

Inspired by The Way I Worked : Jason Fried (37Signals.com)

What I like best is the facts:

• One investor.
  
• A staff of 16
  
• More than three million customers...

Sounds like a good reference for benchmark of how many staffs you need.. ya ? I just want to share some of my philosophies for software engineering team.

The Basic:

• Must have a leader.
  
• Must make use of collaboration tool.
  
• Must share the codes and best practices.
  
• Do not waste time researching things which there are already best practices, just learn it. Instead, research other things which the team not yet know.

Follow The Practice of Medical Fields

A leader must be a practitioner and also a teacher. The idea is that we must keep learning.

Must Always Create Excitement in the Team; everyday.

Do not ever demotivate the team.

The Boss Must Not Think that The Job is So Easy

It is very wrong to think that you can always get sample codes out in the web.

Must Anticipate Problems

A software company must anticipate problems, there will be problems, don't ever pull the panic button.

At Least Two Developers (for a project)

1. Backends
   
2. Features / Front-End

Backends will always be revised.

• New technology
  
• New platform / libraries
  
• New techniques
  
• To cater new features.

Therefore, whenever changes are made to the backend, features and front-end will nee to be changed as well. Challenges:

• You always need to make sure existing version is working while creating a new version.
  
• Support customers.