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Have you hugged a developer today?

Nurturing relationships among team members within an organisation is invaluable for project success, says Kirstin Purves, senior manager at Singular Systems.

Johannesburg, 17 Jan 2020

There exists a peculiar tension between project managers and developers. Anyone who has worked in IT will know what I mean – it’s a tacit disregard for the value that the other brings to the table.

Project managers are automatons who resolutely follow the plan, regardless of the changing environment around them, and kowtow to their clients’ every whim. Developers are anti-social nerds who work on their own terms and are incapable of estimating a user story with flawless accuracy! Stereotyping aside, these perceptions do exist to some extent, often leaving an unfortunate trail of frustration and resentment.

Developers have specialist technical skills honed over many all-nighters. Like it or not, we need them. Here are five things project managers can do that may help developers realise they need us too:

1. Get technical

Being able to speak with some authority on a technical matter with a developer is massively empowering, and probably music to a developer's ears. Even a basic understanding of branching strategies and DevOps concepts will put you in a much better position than the average project manager. So do an online programming course. Brush up on your object-oriented design principles. Know that database structure like the back of your hand. Jump in and help on the testing effort.

2. Let them get on with it

Stop needlessly roping developers into meetings. Aside from the standard agile ceremonies, allow them the space to actually get the work done so you can meet your sprint objectives. To be successful, developers must spend countless hours of screen-time writing code, debugging issues and immersing themselves in logical problems, all of which requires uninterrupted focus. The perpetual context switching is bad for them, and bad for the project.

3. Show some gratitude

We overlook the stack of auxiliary tasks that developers perform in order to bring a solution to fruition – the back-and-forth with the product owner, getting clearance from an over-extended architect, hounding a third party for an API integration spec, those “insignificant” errands that hardly ever make it onto the Jira board. A simple e-mail to say ‘thank you’ or an unsolicited take-away coffee from the canteen (yes, paid for out of your own pocket) can go a long way towards feeling acknowledged and appreciated.

4. Side with the dev team

Sometimes clients make illogical demands or don’t always know what’s best. Cramming in additional features days before a live deployment is not okay. Failure to recognise these moments, or even worse, recognising these moments and choosing not to protect the development team to avoid confrontation, can feel like a betrayal. Apply an element of critical thinking to what you do and then do the right thing. Clients are also human beings – have the uncomfortable conversation, offer a compromise or simply say ‘no’.

5. Ask. Don’t command

More often than not the client is absolutely right and we simply need to deliver. The hard deadline is looming, the team has over-committed and there’s a simmering urge to point fingers. The temptation to blurt out: “You committed to getting this done. Nobody leaves until all these bugs are fixed and signed off!” is strong. Hard to swallow when you’ve been diligently pulling all-nighters for the last two weeks, and this situation is “not my fault”. Try a different approach. “Team, we’re so close now. One final push will get us over the line. Would anyone be prepared to work late tonight to get this done? Pizza is on me!” Accept that the answer might be “no”, but I can almost guarantee it won’t.

A key ingredient of a successful company is “relationships” and it’s something we at Singular Systems believe in wholeheartedly. There is often an emphasis on building and maintaining relationships with clients and, while this is imperative, we believe that nurturing relationships among team members within the organisation is just as valuable for project success.

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Editorial contacts

Jeremy Hart
Service manager
(+27) 10 003 0700
JHart@singular.co.za