Monday, March 13, 2006

Real Life Minesweeper

One of the key tasks that I perform as a Software Development manager is to be the minesweeper. I need to make sure that as many obstacles as possible on a project are cleared before the developers get to the point where it impacts on the critical path. This can range from sorting out the procurement of hardware and software to facilitating inter-team communication. Projects at work range in size from the small to the large, so we don't tend to have dedicated project managers except on the most critical of projects. Every developer generally performs dual roles which isn't ideal from my perspective but necessary given our size. In a sense, this means that I get to contribute both strategically and tactically - the trick is to minimise the tactical involvement to areas where you add value, without micro-managing the developers.

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