Advice on Tech Team Management
Tech team management is more of an art than science. Don’t believe it? Try measuring individual software engineers’ productivity within an agile process!
Traditionally, good managers were the ones who had a great ability to control, monitor and discipline their teams or employees. Today, the concept of management has completely shifted from an autocratic style towards a collaborative approach. The overall management structure is now evolving at a much faster rate and this requires managers to manage their tech team with a different approach.
Here is experts’ advice for tech team management that’s proven to work.
Trust Your Team
Being a manager, avoid prescribing ways to achieve technical success. This is something your tech team knows best and loves to do!
Instead, focus on setting clear timelines and objectives. This starts from the project level (weekly, daily, monthly) and can even reach team-level (product deadlines, sprints, market milestones). Once you have effectively communicated the deadlines and objectives, let your tech teamwork through. Let them decide how to plan and organize their work to meet all the objectives. Once you empower your team to make decisions in the right direction, you will get more enthusiastic and energized teams along with better work results.
Always Share Feedback
Never underestimate the power of constructive and timely feedback. After all, tech teams respond best to data. Always give feedback to your team and let them know how their efforts are being used. Avoid getting stuck on the raw data, for instance, number of users. Instead, focus on customer benefit and tell them how their work is making a positive impact.
One way to gather this information is to talk to customers as well as customer support teams. Make sure all the functional teams including support, product development, sales, and engineering share the feedback.
Effective Communication and Transparency
Effective communication and transparency have always proved to be extremely helpful in the efficient management of the tech team. It is important to promote healthy discussion between and within teams. Make timelines as to how you are planning to achieve the given target.
Always be honest in your communication. When you start a discussion with properly planned strategy and when you hold a list of things you need your tech team to accomplish, discussion and two-way communication become effective as well as easy. When you assign work individually and set milestones, your team can coordinate better and work in a collaborative and stress-free environment.
Reward Problem Solving
Tech teams love to deal with problems and build new stuff. Make the most of this and find out incentives that may foster this unique and fundamental characteristic. You may try elevating the significance of the company’s ability and desire to build better products on an organizational level. Instill pride in the efforts of your tech team through group messages, all-hands meeting or blogs. Don’t forget to recognize and reward their work with more compensation.
Remember management is an art and if you have the right skills to lead a tech team, nothing can stop you from going a long way!