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How Do I Manage Seasoned Programmers?
An anonymous reader writes "I have a technology background and worked as a programmer for a few years before slipping over to the dark side. I am now on the business side and have been given responsibility for a small team of Java programmers. While the technology aspect of what my team works on doesn't scare me, I need ideas to make sure the team stays motivated while reporting to me, a business-oriented guy. Perhaps I should mention I am in my early 30s while the majority of the team constitute an older, wiser generation. What advice should I follow to avoid turning into yet another Bill Lumbergh?"
These are creative people, and will resist things like status reports and hard work schedules.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Microsoft Project!
11 herbs and spices?
Salt / Pepper / Oregeno?
TFA doesn't really help.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They must understand that you are the boss. They must answer to you, irregardless of what fancy degrees and experience they have. Without order, only chaotic code will result.
As a programmer, the thing I hate the most is having to redo code over again due to poor specs or bad design docs. Make sure they are organized and have the correct specifications.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The big problem I see in people who are tech managers is a lack of understanding of project management. They're fine with people, if not missing some subtlety here and there, and it sounds like you've got a team that has few personnel problems. So focus on building your project management talents, which is about deadlines, coming up with objective measurements for progress, and setting realistic goals. Your team should be able to tell you where the trouble spots will be in the development cycle, how fast they expect to overcome each obstacle, and help you plot a roadmap, but only if you ask the right questions.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Beer, wine, whiskey and good food.
Seriously, they're people. You make it sound like you're some exotic zoo keeper and you need to know what to do when they present their glowing red ass.
Why don't you think: "How would I like to be treated?" With respect, open communication, acknowledgment of work done, incentive for above and beyond... and learn who they are.
The fact that you cared enough to ask is a big step.
You don't want to touch them too often or they get tough and dried out.
Oh wait, that's hamburgers. Nevermind.
Focus on getting them what they need, staying out of their way, and keeping the management shit out of their way.
Fight Spammers!
All you need to do is walk in and say:
"Are you working?"
"yes"
"Can you work harder?"
"good"
If they get tired buy them hammocks.
It helps if your wearing a Tom Landrey hat.
Listen.
Be open to criticism and be willing to change course in response to it.
Make sure when you do talk technical, you know what you're talking about. Feel free to ask questions if you don't know, and be able to absorb and express abck what you've learned.
If you need to make a decision based on "fluffy business stuff" that goes against the right theing to do on a technical issue, explain it thouroughly and be able to back it up. Geeks thrive on more information, not less.
Give the geeks freedom to graze.
See, the key here is whether or not these developers are good developers. Experienced and responsible.
If they are, the best advice I'd give you is to stay the hell out of their way. They will deliver. The best developers need a set of requirements, a deadline, a good working environment and caffeinated drinks. Not much more.
But on the other hand, if they're not, then you need to stay on top of them. But how are you going to figure out if they are, given that you're a business guy? That's a difficult situation.
If you do know that at least one of them is the kind of person that can lead, work through him/her to make sure you can identify any potential problems.
There's nothing better than a good developer who can design, code, document and communicate, and does not need constant supervision. On the other hand, there's nothing worse than one that pretends to do those things and turns out to be a disaster for the project.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
You don't have to. You are redundant.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
What does responsibility mean? Can you fire them and increase their salaries? If so, then they should be relatively motivated to at least meet your expectations.
What can you do to make it easier? Don't be a bozo. That means (1) take the political heat for your team, and (2) try and insulate them from changes in specs. Or, (3) make sure they know what they're building/supposed to do.
Think of them as normal employees, not programmers. Sure they may be smart, but they're still people. Possibly weird, potentially infantile, probably high maintenance, and hopefully productive people, but they're still people. So treat them like everyone else.
Oh, and be sure to treat them like experts. They like that.
Seriously. People will tend to respond a lot better to you if they feel that they have legitimate input into the process, and many of those folks might be able to provide ideas and experience that you can benefit directly from.
Of course, I'm speaking as a 46-year-old programmer who's been doing software design/development for 20 years, so my bias is from the other side. Then again, most of the folks I tend to deal with are at my experience level or higher so in many cases *I* tend to be the youngster with the radical ideas. But I've learned to defer to my elders in many cases even tho I disagree. Sometimes they actually turn out to be right! ;-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Be the type of manager that YOU would want to work for.
[Insert pithy quote here]
99% of the comments you'll get will be technical. This shows /. er's lack of undrstanding about the business world, and your programmers are likely to suffer the same blindness. I would say in general let these guys work unhindered and give them all the support you can, but in the event there is something drastic you need to change about the product explain the business case to them. When you can show that X > Y means $$$ most people will understand right away. This works both ways, in the event you get given directives that won't work on a technical level.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
First, remember that they know more about what they're doing than you do. Listen to them. If they say a schedule is unrealistic, it is almost certainly unrealistic, and you need to take whatever business action is appropriate. They know better than you how to do things. Tell them what to do, not how to do it. Tell them the business reasons for doing things. They might have better ideas than you.
Second, be honest with them. Don't be afraid to tell them things they might not want to hear, but if they catch you in substantive lies your effectiveness will nose-dive. Explain yourself.
Third, set them up to succeed. Try to figure out what obstacles they're likely to run into, and try to remove them.
Fourth, keep up to date on their progress. Don't let them go dark on you. Don't make them afraid to admit failure or schedule overruns, or you'll be blindsided sometime.
These won't necessarily help you with problem employees, but most of your employees are probably interested in doing a good job.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Best manager I ever worked under asked me my pain points, and what I wanted to do in the job and how I wanted to grow. He then proceeded to help me in those three areas.
That's it. Pretty simple, eh?
If they are seasoned, keep out of their way, help them when they are frustrated, and make sure they are doing stuff they enjoy and keep them happy. They find a new technology they want to use? You make sure they get the opportunity to use it. They want a managerial job? You make sure they get the classes/seminars/education/opportunities they need. Your job is simply to remove obstacles that get in there way...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The answer is simple--be their best friend. And let them know repeatedly that you want to be their best friend. There's no way they won't accept you. Trust me on this one.
This guy's the limit!
How do you handle programmers? The same way you handle kindergarteners. Really, if you've ever had kids, you already have all the skills you need to manage engineers. Set clear expectations and priorities. Make sure they play nice with each other. Give them a shiny new toy when they've been good. As a manager, you filter all the information coming from above. Good managers filter out the pressure and bullshit and only on passes on information that gives the programmers a good idea of what their goals and priorities should be. Bad managers just pass on the shitting on they get from their managers along to their underlings, sometimes even amplifying it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
First thing you need to do is establish yourself as the alpha geek. Walk into the room and fire the first one to make eye contact. Then expound for two hours on how crappy Java is and how all you really need is a copy of Ruby on Rails and a Red Bull to be able to cover everything they do.
The next day, show up with a box of Dilbert comics and pass them out, demand each team member identify five 'wrong thoughts' express by Dilbert and his coworkers and indicate how they actually should have acted in regards to their PHB. Emphasize that the PHB a highly paid executive and deserves their attention and respect. Dilbert's job is to make his bosses' ideas successful, not to mock him.
The next day, first the second person who makes eye contact with you. Encourage your team to ridicule them as they make the walk of shame from your office to the exit.
The day after that, ask them to participate in a team building session where everyone is armed with a nerf weapon and is allowed to act out their aggression. Bring your own baseball bat.
The day after that mention that you expect the team to put in manditory overtime. You forgot to mention to them that they have a milestone deadline coming up tomorrow and you are still working with marketing to finialize the specs.
On the day after that, enjoy the peace and quiet you've earned yourself. You'll need it as you now no longer have a team to worry about.
Project management is not only for the managers. Grab some basic books on the subject (hopefully based around software development) and have the coders read them.
If nothing else, it gives everyone a shared vocabulary for the situations and approaches that they'll face.
If nothing else, read a website on it.
http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm
or
http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdmistak.htm
Don't tell him that. He'll actually believe it.
Here's what you should actually do: Manage.
Be honest with your team. Tell them what you need and when you need it. Take advice from them on the best way to arrange that. If they're experienced (read that as set in their ways) forcing some oddball paradigm on them will send you permanently to PHB land. They'll never listen to you after that. You'll be regarded as an obstacle rather than a help.
You're herding cats - never forget that. Let them do what they want in the way they want to do it and all should be well. Just make sure they know what your expectations are.
And if you want something Lumbergh-like from them, say so. Then do the unusual thing and say why you want it. Don't just demand status reports from them. Ask for them, tell them you need these reports "because of pressure you're getting from your supervisor about this certain customer, and if we make schedule with this project they will potentially select us for the next project, and that means more revenue for the company."
Talk to them as equals. Explain your concerns to them. NEVER talk down to them or enforce some odd idea that the manager caste is above the programmer caste. You are all equals on a team, sink or swim together.
Do these things, ignore the buzzwords and manager-hype, be their fellow employee and the details will solve themselves. If these guys decide they like you your job will become a thousand times easier. You will always have loyal allies, rather than disgruntled drones.
And best of luck. Don't just be a manager - be a good one.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Went back to the tech side.
But the management stint wasn't wasted. It did make me realize there is a "bigger picture" that is always mentioned. I'd say the most important thing is to get this across. Tell them there will be decisions made by you, sometimes that you have control over and sometimes not, that won't make a lot of sense at your group's level. If they're your decisions you have some hope of explaining them. If they are decisions made up the chain then give as much information as you have and point out that it made sense to someone at some point and since y'all are all getting a paycheck from the same company then those are the marching orders.
Other than that just work to get your team the things they need. It's their work that will make you look good (or bad) so your job is to make sure they have the tools and time they need to do their jobs. If you give them that then they need to actually do their jobs and you will want to keep them accountable for that. Nothing says bad manager more than someone who ignores the slacker while everyone else is pulling their weight.
$0.02,
-CZ
Read Hackers and Painters and Mythical Man Month, especially the latter.
Know this: checking in on your developers via a bug tracking system is probably advisable instead of constantly walking in and saying, "What's happening." Note period instead of a question mark.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
There's only one quality I generally rate managers by, and you could call it confidence, ability, cool-headedness or whatever. It all tends to boil down to the same thing. A manager who is incompetent, an example of the Peter Principle, afraid he is going to lose his job if it's discovered he is unqualified is someone who says yes to his boss and other business units all of the time, and makes ridiculous demands on those under him. If things go wrong he panics and flips out. A confident, able boss knows his stuff, can deal firmly with his manager or other business units when need be, doesn't flip out when something goes wrong and so on.
Bullshit stops at YOUR door. Whether coming down from your management, or headed up from one of your primadonna coders.
Your job is to provide the environment that best lets your people do what they do best. You are insulation, you are the sponge, you are the glue. All superfluous shit must be sandwiched and eaten by you.
Don't try to be technical, admit what you don't know and ask for explanations. Realize that coders consider their code as a mother does her children. If you criticize, you better be right, or you will be hated forever. If the baby is truly ugly, KNIFE it, don't adapt to crap.
NEVER turn down a legitimate request for tools considered necessary for their jobs. NEVER. Find the money, find the stomach to fight your management for the funds, and YOU make the arguments on your people's behalf.
This is how you get coders on your side. (that and free food and drink.)
You have to be the cog in the wheel.
You don't have to. You are redundant.
There is a lot of truth in this.
Assuming that you have a good team (not one where they trapped all of the old malcontents together so they'd be easy to herd), they'll know what to do. In general, your job is going to be making sure that the goals for your project are clear, that you have enough resources to do the job that is scoped, negotiating about limiting the scope when you don't have the resources, making sure that you have a detailed enough plan for the short term so you can see if people are achieving short term goals, re-assigning resources in case issues come up, renegotiating with superiors about more resources and scope reduction when you fall behind, etc. Very little of your time should be spent telling them what to do. You should tell them the goals and then let them decide how they're going to get meet them. Of course, if they tell you that they need hookers and blow first, you might ask them how that's going to help their productivity (for the hookers, at least).
That is all.
focus on a pointless statement in an offhand conversation, and keep repeating it over and over, getting louder all the time, the whole week, with a huge grin on your face, like its a hilarious joke
ask them to come in your office and sit down, ask them to close the door in a very soft whisper, and then stand up, displaying an obvious erection in your pants
in the company restroom, stand next to them while they are urinating, even if there are ten open urinals, and make sure to pee a little on their shoes, making emotionless blank eye contact while doing so
sit silently in a meeting for the longest time, with a slightly pained expression, then excuse yourself, and, outside of the room but within earshot/ plain view, starting crying loudly and hysterically like a wounded child
in no time you will be deriving the respect and affection you deserve
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
HSPLTA - Hire Smart People Leave Them Alone...simple yet never achieved by anyone I've ever worked for.
You need to let the programmers do what they do best...while remembering programmers' tendencies to do things like pick resume-padding technologies instead of the right technologies and freaking out over small changes instead of rolling with the punches. Easier said than done, but it's the truth.
Also, whatever you do, do NOT, as some people have erroneously suggested, "be the manager that you would want to work for" because there's a good chance you don't share the same values as some of your programmers. The best rule for managers is to treat others like they want you to treat them.
For example, I'm not particularly driven by money. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't work for free and I like financial security, but when I line up priorities, thingslike freedom of time and thought are a lot more important to me than if a bonus is paid at 150% or something like that. My favorite managers have understood this, even if they don't understand how I'm wired, and they tend to leave me alone and not over-manage, unless absolutely necessary. And I've worked quite hard for them.
So as much as you can (while maintaining consistency and keeping expectations well-known), adapt to each individual instead of implementing some across-the-board strategy. One guy may be driven by money. Another may be going through a divorce and always one the edge.
Programmers are people and there's plenty of good and bad that comes with that. Some of them are just going to be jerks. And some aren't. Some will even be tremendous people. There's nothing you can do about this, but don't let yourself get pushed around or too worked up about it.
Finally, always set clear expectations and never ever raise your voice or roll your eyes (neither of those work...).
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
These I learned in the military... Probably one of, if not the biggest things to do - Lead by Example. There's no better way to shred your credibility and reputation for barking at someone for coming in a bit late, if you come in late all the time.
Secondly, always check up on your people. It's amazingly simple to do, but it's almost a bygone in the modern corporate world. No matter how busy your month, take a good 5 or 10 minutes with each member of your team as ask them how everything's going, what some of there frustrations are, what are some things they may need. It's amazing how good a roadmap you get when you just sit an listen.
Communicate - both ways. Encourge input from your team, but dont be afraid to send some the other way. If someone's doing something you like, or not doing something, say so. Probably my biggest personal pet peeve is non-confrontational managers who basically shotgun-blast you with their little annoyances once a year at your performance review. Your team doesn't necessarily have to know where your at every second of every day, but it's always good to provide some high-level status updates. Take a few minutes out of your schedule to update the team.
Recognize good performance, but don't be overly cheesy about it. Taking a minute to walk into an office and say 'I really appreciate the effort you put in last week to meet the deadline, Jim' will often mean a lot. It means even more in person, rather than email.
I could go on, but really a lot of it is pretty straight forward. You people should want to work hard for you and want to impress you, and good leadership shows when they do. Treat you team members as professionals with respect and how you would like to be treated.
My area of expertise is not in programming, but rather in engineering - similar, but different too - so take this with a grain of salt.
As a manager of technically proficient people, you have only a few major tasks in front of you: first, be sure to marginalize or fire uncooperative or difficult people (the "no-assholes rule"). You can live with lower levels of expertise, but you cannot live with drama. To paraphrase Roger Zelazny, the graveyards are full of people who thought they couldn't be replaced.
Second, it's important to know that, aside from keeping the team asshole-free, you are not "in charge" here. They know what they are doing and they can track it better than you can. Employees of technical expertise actually need facilitators to assist them more than they need managers to direct their efforts. So be available to your team to take up the things they cannot afford to spend time doing - communicate with other departments, run interference with project managers, make sure that they get the help they need.
In my particular field, a manager should be prepared to provide more assistance than control. I don't think programming would be that different.
---don't make me break out my red pen.
What you're responsible for is what they produce, not the people. If your team is composed of professionals, they will be self-motivated already. So focus on helping them produce. This means looking for what's hampering them and working to minimize/eliminate it, and looking for what could make them more productive and working to provide that. If you don't know -- ask. Talk to them, as a group or one-on-one, and find out what their "pain points" are or what they want to see done.
Never forget they are people, not "human resources", and treating them with respect and consideration will earn you major props.
Thomas
...and use Agile. Here is the best book in the world: Agile estimation and planning
To micro-manage them is to underutilize them (and to frustrate them). Your job is to understand the business problems and communicate them as business problems, and let the team figure out the technical solutions...they should give you some alternatives, and let you pick the right ones. After that, your job is to ensure that nothing obstructs their development, and to take action whenever they tell you that they are blocked.
If you must be hard on deadlines, then you must be soft on requirements. Or vice versa. Being hard on both will always guarantee failure to deliver, and talent walking out the door. Usually being hard on deadlines is the choice of the day.....so being soft on requirements must be done, but *intelligently.* Some requirements are core to the usefulness of the app. Some are gold-plating. Move the gold-plating to the bottom of the priority heap. Each iteration will then represent the maximum possible business value that can be developed within the allotted time.
You also spend a lot less time trying to stick stuff end-to-end in making a project plan and having to spend more time changing it all around after things don't go as planned halfway through the project. Micro-managers tend to hate agile, despite the fact that it is a much more realistic addressing of the realities of software development than traditional, waterfall, winds up being.
The most inspiring thing a manager ever said to me, and a line which I always try to use when appropriate: That's my problem, let me handle that. Clear the landmines for them and let them run.
But did you actually produce anything?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I've just spent 2 years managing programmers who although not older, were generally much smarter than me, so I speak from relevant experience.
First of all you have one huge advantage; Software developers want to do great work. Coders are generally passionate and proud about what they do.
Your job is to make sure they have the environment they need to do that.
Programmers tend to be task-focussed people. Their faults are typically that they don't communicate unless asked, and they forget deadlines unless they are constantly made aware of them. Obviously I'm generalising here, but the balance of your team will probably tend this way.
So what you need to give them is clearly defined tasks, regular meetings where they talk to you and each other, and no excuse for not being aware of their targets/deadlines.
Most people, and geeks more than most, don't like to be ordered around and will be more invested in decisions they made themselves. Therefore when you make decisions about the development process, do it in a meeting. Say something like, "We need a more structured process for development." (Programmers will generally agree, they like order and structure, that's why they're programmers.) "We could use [insert favoured methodology here], what does the team think?"
If they have no stronger opinions, people will generally choose the one choice given to them and consider it to be their own idea from then on. If they /have/ got stronger opinions, they might well be worth listening to.
So in short;
Define the team methodology in as democratic manner as you can.
Get them to sign up to the methodology and make it theirs.
From then on enforce discipline with reference to the methodology. Your authority then proceeds from the team itself, as well as your position.
A couple of other piece of advice; be a hard-ass about defining requirements with your clients (internal or external) and even more so about changing them. Learn everything you can about software estimation. Most projects that fall over at the end make their mistakes at the beginning.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
Unless your project is 100% exciting to everyone on the team, the answer is, you won't be able to manage it without adding some junior programmers. A dude with 10 years of experience and multiple death marches under his belt will simply find hard to get excited about the mundane. That's not what he's there for. He's there to take on the big challenges, design stuff that works and implement it in a way that he's not embarrased by it five years from now.
The corollary is either/or:
1. Most of your project must be "exciting" to developers on the team. Very few projects qualify. In this case you can spread the shitty bits around so that people are less annoyed by them.
2. You have to have a significant contingent of junior employees who will do the shitty bits that don't matter (but don't forget to throw them a bone and let them do something interesting as well).
Most importantly, show appreciation for the work people do, whether they're senior or junior. I've been in the industry for well over a decade, and you won't believe how much easier it is to motivate people if you just say thanks to each of them personally every now and then, and maybe slip in a perk here and there. For reasons I don't understand, a lot of managers focus a lot more on cracking the whip. Big mistake, if you want people to stick around and actually produce something decent.
Assuming you're all in the same office...
One-on-one meetings in a comfortable and somewhat informal manner. Make it regular (twice a week or so?) and find some way to give them advanced notice indirectly, like doing it at the same time every week or passing by their office/cubes a few minutes before jumping in to ask for the informal report. If you startle them, leave and come back in a few minutes (really!). Their desks should be oriented in a manner that makes it hard to sneak up on them; if that's not the case, buy a mirror for their monitor.
Group meetings at a less often interval (weekly or every other week) where everybody talks about what they're doing, and you reveal the long-term strategies, etc. Doing this over a free lunch or end-of-day beers (5:30p is "beer thirty" on "frosty friday" or "thirsty thursday," etc.) is always a winner. You already know most of the answers, so this is actually all for their benefit; this is when you report to them and they report to each other. This helps emphasize the philosophy that when co-workers are all friends, more work gets done with less apparent effort.
Never criticize them for something you also fail at. Instead, announce that you're looking to improve that aspect in yourself and they'll get the message.
You read Slashdot, so you're probably very IT-savvy ... older software engineers are a bit removed from that, so be careful about introducing new services (e.g. software services for bug tracking, wiki, source control, project management, social networking). When you do such introductions, make sure they are walked through, and the installation process is trivialized (all the above examples are web-based to eliminate client-side installation).
Finally, pick up a book on agile development practice and consider migrating the team to a scrum cycle. Even if you decide it's not the right idea (or if you're already doing it), it will give you some management insight.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Your first post was possibly funny. Now you've proven you're either a troll or a bitter, jaded individual who was probably passed over for good reason.
It was actually a *mistake* that the only advancement path for most exceptional skilled workers was to become a manager that didn't use their exceptional skills. Project management has always been a specialized skillset. For some unknown reason, it was assumed that people who learned how to build things could also supervise other builders. I call shenanigans.
The military figured this out years ago. Commissioned officers make plans, non-coms implement the plan, and specialists do the work. Each butterbar junior officer goes through a fairly rigorous training course to give them the concepts and then they get to actually learn the job once they get assigned to their unit where their captain and sargeant finish up the training.
When the engineering company I used to work at introduced a "technical expert" path as well as a "project management" path I was overjoyed. Finally, the best do-ers could keep do-ing without being forced into managing. Plus, theoretically, the project managers would *finally* know how to manage.
None of that happened, unfortunately, so I jumped ship. Last I heard they were closing offices. The place I work at now does have various technical grades that provide a pretty wide salary band and it's doing fine.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Don't leave your developers out of your design discussions and brainstorming.
On my last project for an extremely large customer (with an equally huge project), the good line managers were our (the developers) advocates, they took the bullshit so we didn't have to, and determined the "big picture". They didn't manage who was doing which particular piece of code - that was down to the developers to organize themselves. Managing the development team was less about managing the people in it (the developers could organize themselves) but being an advocate for the team, and making sure that the people who knew how to do the stuff were fully involved in decisions affecting them. Developers were not merely involved but critical to things such as sizing parts of the project, so that unrealistic schedules were not set. The line manager's job was in this case often to tell upper management "this is why it's going to take this long" in terms they could understand, and persuade upper management not to cause a disaster by compressing schedules or adding more work.
It resulted in a productive development team which did not have to do unpaid overtime, and delivered a quality product to the customer - earning a very large sum of money for the company.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Seriously, it sounds obvious, but it's a start. Figure out what their interests are, where their passions are in regards to their work, and determine if this is a person that you can put in charge of a piece of your project, or if this is someone who is only working for a paycheck. I've had my best results (and I picked this up from working in successful teams like this) by giving those who had stronger interests a degree of responsibility over a particular section of code, and had the "paycheck" guys work on all the other tasks that needed to get done.
This approach works fine for both Agile and Waterfall, if you really "get" both methodologies. When you're working with seasoned developers, you're probably working with guys and ladies who've developed strong interests in particular niches by this point in their careers. If you can find a section of your project that jibes with those interests, you'll probably get fantastic results out of those folks. People who tell you that it's better to stay super generalized and constantly switch tasks without respecting those interests don't understand that if you're not passionate about something in your job, you'll most likely start looking for another job.
And hey, if you have some seasoned guys who don't care either way, and just like that paycheck, those guys come in handy, too. They're like handymen, you can assign all the other tasks to them and they'll probably do them well enough. Saves you some time from trying to find contractors to do the work.
I've found that seasoned programmers, even so-called "agile" ones, often miss the big picture when it comes to changing business needs, shifting priorities, budget cuts, politics, etc. Some programmers exhibit the same attitude as Dante Hicks in "Clerks": "You know, this job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers". Others listen to the customer too much, when it should be clear that the customer doesn't really know (yet) what he wants. Programmers may not have the aptitude, remit or time to deal with all this, or (more often than not) they simply aren't interested.
And that is fine: that's where the team lead or project manager comes in. If some manager is being an arse about requirements or timelines, make sure he talks to you instead of your team. And also make sure that you know how to handle that manager. Can you convince him he's wrong, can you find someone who can, or can you discuss this with the project's steering committee or sponsor? Many, many incorrect decisions and false assumptions will be made. As a techie with a bit of business experience, you stand a fair chance of spotting these. And as a project lead, it is your job to steer the ship away from disaster and back on course. That's where your added value lies.
In my opinion the Parent's statement quoted above is only half right. If you have a team of seasoned and competent programmers, your challenges will indeed not arise from your team, but from the business side. Which means you are anything but redundant.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
You don't herd cats, you just put them near the mice and they turn into a ruthless and efficient killing machine!
I totally feel your pain, I served a tour as a lead programmer, then technical manager, then director, then back to lead. Here's some of the things that I learned that weren't the most obvious to my fellow managers in other departments:
1. Protect them. Put a programmer in a position in which he reports to just ONE boss and he'll follow you into hell. If the manager does his job, his programmers can actually spend the time programming instead of getting sucked into a reporting system where they have 8 bosses.
2. Don't waste their time. Corporate is always adding stupid crap that all it ends up doing is slowing down the personnel that are actually producing. Try to cut down on redundant and/or useless reports, non-project/deliverable meetings, etc. Your goal here is to have your people spend as much time as possible billing to a project instead of burning overhead.
3. Detach yourself a little bit. You are not their friend, you are their boss. You don't have to be an ass about it, but you can't hang out with them unless you take out the whole team for food, drinks, whatever. If you want to hang out with people in the same company, find other managers.
4. You can rule with an iron hand, but try not to humiliate people in public. If one of your guys screws up, pull him aside and deal with it in private. Just because you have to adjust the employee doesn't mean you have to add humiliation to the mix. I know too many managers that simply can't understand how crucial this is.
5. Don't obsess over the minutiae that is out of your control. The whole idea of having these senior guys is to have them do the heavy lifting for you, while you steer them in a general direction. Don't bother catching up to whatever technology they are dealing with. You do need to understand its capabilities and its limitations, but you don't need to know how to type the damn code yourself. Again, I know plenty of managers that refuse to let go and end up as horrible micromanagers.
The best way to handle senior people is to tell them what you expect them to deliver, with broad guidance, plus whatever constraints are in place and out of your control. Let them do the work, try not to stand on their way and protect them from people that won't hesitate to make them waste their time.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
And you treat your kids like they're your friends rather than your kids?
A poor metaphor. You and your children are not equals. Not in any way. Not legally, not in terms of experience, nada. They need stern guidance. Most grown-ups (meaning both engineers and managers) do not. If they do, they need fired, not managed.
That being said, I do my best to be a friend to my son. 99% of the time a kind word works as well (or better) than punishment. I won't hold back though if punishment is called for though. I'm not soft. Just thoughtful.
Your statement about status reports would come across as BSing to me.
If you're incapable of responding to adult conversation and honest communication, that's your problem not mine.
Status reports help engineers focus their minds and keep their attention on track of what they need or have agreed to do.
Maybe if you have ADD it does. I know what my tasks are without having to explain them to someone every other day.
For the managers they help reassure them that they've understood that the engineers understand the requirements and direction
Only if the engineers you've hired are morons who have to have things explained to them over and over and over. If that is the case, go to careerbuilder and hire yourself a new batch of engineers. What you've got there aren't engineers, they're idiots.
They still have to talk to each other between reports though.
If you have motivated adult workers, this is certainly enough. Reports gathered from engineers who don't respect you won't add up to jack. I know this for a fact.
I once had a job where - for reasons too complicated to get into - the head of engineering had me working on a secret project. It was something we were working on, his boss said to stop it, but he told me to keep going on it. That meant I had to falsify status reports every week.
Yes, I was paid to lie. And from that experience, I learned two things.
1) You can lie your ass off on status reports. Either nobody reads them, or nobody understands them. My boss eventually admitted it was the first case. Too much work to babysit everyone. It's a psychological trick to make you work harder because you think you're being watched. Odds are, you aren't.
2) Because nobody is getting anything of value from them, they are generally useless.
I'm sure there are exceptions to this, and there may be a manager out there who actually reads his team's status reports. Probably as rare as hen's teeth, and I've never met one, but it's not impossible.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'll also recommend Peopleware and follow the advice in the "Oh for crying out loud" post that this reply is under. I was going to post essentially the same advice.
I once managed a software development group that had several Ph.Ds, some people with Masters degrees (I have an M.Sc. in Math) and most of the rest with B.Sc.s in computer science. We were developing software for a radar project and most of the Ph.Ds had degrees that were applicable in fields like high energy physics and atmospheric physics, etc. They all came to the same conclusion that they couldn't do what I did which was serve as the communications channel between my group and upper management. All I had to do was make sure thet they knew that I knew that they had the answers. They even had to help me with the questions some times.
The key was that I didn't have a problem with this situation. It would have been a problem if I had pretended to know or had ignored the fact that they knew more about the subject than me. Instead, we became a team that solved the problem (almost on time and very close to within budget on a cost plus contract).
The people working for you (hopefully) want to solve the problems you bring to them. Work with them to understand the problem and keep the part that they are trying to solve within the realm of technology. Do your best to keep company politics from disrupting them. Likewise, learn to spot when someone is trying to have your team create a technical fix to what is essentially a political problem. That's usually a recipe for disaster. The better you are able to keep your team focused on technical issues, the happier, more successful and more productive they will be.
One last thing to remember. You mentioned that your team is older than you. Keep in mind that most if not all of them made a conscious decision NOT to go into management at some point in their career. They don't want to deal with management/company politics stuff. That's your job and they will be happy to let you do it so long as they can keep coding.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
One-on-one meetings in a comfortable and somewhat informal manner. Make it regular (twice a week or so?) and find some way to give them advanced notice indirectly, like doing it at the same time every week or passing by their office/cubes a few minutes before jumping in to ask for the informal report. If you startle them, leave and come back in a few minutes (really!). Their desks should be oriented in a manner that makes it hard to sneak up on them; if that's not the case, buy a mirror for their monitor.
Wait, is this still about the glowing red ass thing ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.