STEP Presentation

The Challenges in Managing Development Teams

Benjamin Kaiser

Project Background

  • Development Team Lead of 4 subteams
  • Leading one of the subteams myself (API Team)

Issues Faced

Issue: Monitoring Team Progress

  • Many subteams
  • Different levels of progress
  • Groups of tasks could be missed until end of semester
  • No sense of overall timeline between teams

Solution Chosen

Switch to user-story based workflow helped us to:

  • fix timeline estimation issues
  • have clear commitments from teams on deadlines
  • improve reporting to upper-level management

Risks Associated

  • Definition of "Complete" differing (functional, UI, non-functional, etc)
  • Multiple features due at a time, requiring good time-management from the teams

Issue: Code Self-Testing

  • Developers inside subteams are testing their own code leading to bias

Solution Chosen

Developers write their own code.

Other team members test it.

Risks Associated

  • Context-switch overhead
  • More points-of-failure in process

Issue: Enforcing the Development Process

  • Teams not following correct QA / Configuration process set out at the outset of the project

Solution

QA and Configuration Managers enforced their processes.

  • Config manager reverting merges they did not approve
  • Requiring that every merge into develop pass QA

 

This resulted in a higher quality of code from the teams.

Associated Risks

  • Delays in QA or Configuration Management can cause development delays
  • QA must become an expert in all platforms, or assign other developers (not responsible for the PR) to review the code

Summary

  • We switch to a user-story based workflow
  • Developers had other team members test their code
  • QA and Configuration Managers strictly enforced their processes throughout the teams

Thank you

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