Management Growing Pains

As team sizes grow a hands-on manager will struggle to keep on top of their own work load, often causing bottle necks within software projects. This has certainly been my personal experience. The "roll your sleeves back, get stuck in" style of management can no longer be applied universally to tasks because there are too many tasks. Managers will often be uncomfortable in letting other team members carry out important jobs, yet they now struggle to find time to do it to quality themselves. The key to solving the problem is to recognise and accept that the larger the team the more inefficient it becomes. Often in software development teams doubling output requires exponential team growth. Let other team members initially take longer than you would to perform a task and then make time to review the task they have carried out. If you are not happy with the results, explain to them why and ensure they understand. That way quality can only improve. Do's and Don'ts:

• Don't personally produce direct project deliverables; instead enable the team to produce these by way of facilitating.
• Don't say "leave it with me" or similar responses to questions which cause you to accept work; instead say "ask xyz how they..." or "read xyz, that should give you a better insight..." or "I usually do it like this...".
• Don't feel guilty for giving team members more responsibility which was previously beyond the scope of their job. But do accept accountability for their work.
• Do schedule regular task review sessions and offer coaching and advice.
• Do allow team members to make their own mistakes, but create a sandbox for this to happen in.
• Do repeatedly encourage communication.

If you feel that the team has become too inefficient due to size, consider logically splitting the team with each part concentrating on a different area of concern. This attempts to minimise the "there is only so many surgeons you can get round a body" scenario. There are of course several downsides to doing this. I would generally recommend development teams being no larger than 8-10 people.