Managing a tech startup company can feel like trying to run in ten directions at once. With the full weight of the company’s success on their shoulders, startup owners quickly begin to feel overwhelmed by the number of technical problems that they feel personally responsible for. In addition to being able to competently lead, multitask, and envision a future for their company, the ability to effectively delegate tasks is critical to the success of any tech startup. Furthermore, understanding best practices for managing a development team can give the decision-maker the peace of mind to approach one problem at a time.
To help tech start-up leaders develop roles and responsibilities which maximize their investment in new employees, we have pulled together three tips to help managers organize their dev team:
Allow for more flexibility.
Too much oversight from management can stifle a coder’s ability to arrive at creative solutions or meet deadlines. Your developers know what they’re doing — if they didn’t, you wouldn’t have entrusted the success of your product to them in the first place. By allowing your development team the freedom to move around between their tasks as they see fit, you’ll minimize the chances that they’ll burn themselves out. You’ll also have more time to focus on your own management responsibilities if you allow your coders to manage their own tasks.
Establish a clear chain of communication.
Any coder is inevitably going to encounter technical problems which they will be unable to resolve on their own. If a coder on your dev team knows exactly who to contact and how to contact them if a roadblock is encountered, the process of coming up with a solution can start right away. If, on the other hand, it’s unclear who a coder should communicate with in order to solve a small problem, the whole thing can escalate rather quickly. It’s also important to keep in mind that any chain of communication needs to run both ways. That is, higher-ups in the company should be informed if they have been appointed to be the contact for a member of your development team.
Leverage project management tools.
It’s important for development teams to be equipped with the resources necessary for managing their projects. As leaders, it’s essential to equip developers with a single digital project management platform that can be used to keep track of projects, delegate specific tasks, and manage deadlines. There are several project management tools that are available such as Pivotal Tracker, Monday.com, and Asana, just to name a few — and each has the potential to remove a tremendous amount of friction from the workflow of any development team!
Providing your developers with the tools, resources, and working environment that they’ll need in order to optimally perform their roles will require investing some time and resources, but it has the power to provide your whole organization with some huge returns. Providing flexible work options, implementing a clearly-established ladder of communication, and integrating the proper communication technologies are the first steps towards creating a more harmonious and frictionless workplace for your development team.
To learn more about how you can enhance your workforce, contact us here.
