Are you having trouble managing a software team? Do you find that you’re constantly trying to juggle different tasks, prevent burnout, make sure projects are on track, and check that your employees are working on the right tasks?
It takes skill to manage a software team effectively, and if you want to start building up yours – start with these top pieces of advice from experts:
- Work on your soft skills
To be a good manager, you need good soft skills. In particular you should learn how to empower your team, help them improve their strengths, listen to what they have to say, and encourage them by giving them support and confidence.
- Recruit the right people
Don’t just look at technical skills when you recruit people. Instead, try to figure out how team-oriented they are, as well as if they’re willing to learn and will be a good fit.
- Improve team communication
Start to communicate better with your team creating a communication manifesto that has clear guidelines on how internal communication should be handled. The goal is to let your team communicate effectively while not distracting them from their work.
- Try not to interrupt employees and let them focus
Software developers need to be able to focus on their work without any interruptions. That’s what’s known as ‘deep work’, and to enable it you need to eliminate distractions – for example, by setting aside a quiet space to work.
Aside from that, using WorkExaminer can also be a good way to encourage deep work. If you want you can choose from cloud-based and on-premise solution and use it to find out what employees are working on without interrupting them. Its features will let you see the apps that are running, websites that are visited, and can even capture a live view of their screen.
- Comprehensively document processes and workflows
Documenting your processes and workflows will make things easier on yourself and your staff. It will mean that they don’t need to find you to ask questions, and are less likely to make errors.
- Constantly measure productivity
Productivity can make or break a software team – which is why you must constantly measure it and look for ways to improve it. Tools such as WorkExaminer will be useful on that front and allow you to gather data on how your employees are spending their time.
Based on WorkExaminer’s data you can then identify issues that affect productivity, and track how productive individual employees are. Its reports will make it easy for you to view the data, and you can even use it to eliminate some time wastage by blocking certain apps or websites.
If you follow these tips, managing your software team will be much easier. As you may have noticed, having the right tools is essential – and you can try our solutions for FREE if you want to get started. It won’t take long to install WorkExaminer and get it up and running, so why not give it a try right now?