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