Effective Software Project Management

From the Perspective of the Development Team

Developers come in all sizes, shapes, and descriptions. At the one extreme are those who want others to do the thinking for them. They want a clear and complete specification that they can work with without fear that changes will come forth from the customer. Many of them have no interest in even talking with the customer. At the opposite extreme are those who relate well with the customer and want to engage collaboratively with them in crafting the best solution that money and time can buy. They don’t mind working on a complex ill-defined project. In fact, many thrive on just such projects. In between these two extremes is a vast gulf of variations.

As project manager you certainly know your team members and where they are between the two extremes. The team is certain to be distributed across this spectrum. Those who prefer to be given their assignments and minimize interactions with the customer should be given roles and responsibilities that honor their wishes. The roles and responsibilities that involve customer interaction should be assigned to those who favor that type of relationship.

If the project strategy is either the Linear SDPM strategy or the Incremental SDPM strategy, you can deal with teams whose members are mostly customer averse. You should avoid choosing and agile strategy, if that is the type of team membership you have. My past experiences in systems development are with teams of customer-averse members. That was ...