How to sync work in small software team

Question

We are a small software team with 4 members:

• one Software Architect that gathers requirements and writes Requirements document and Specifications document
• one Designer that designs visual wireframes and prototypes for websites
• one Front-End Developer that implements the client sides of websites using HTML, CSS, and Javascript
• one Back-End Developer that builds applications using use server-side languages/technology

Our problem is that when the Software Architect starts design the whole project, other team members are idle and their time wasted. Also, everything becomes complicated if we have 2 or 3 project under development.

I am searching for a good development process to manage my team members and avoid wasting their time.

Answer 1

One suggestion is that you shouldn't have a long requirements phase, followed by a long design phase and then a long development phase. Pick the most valuable part of the project and build this first. That will reduce the length of time your team is waiting on the initial requirements. After this, requirements gathering for the next iteration can proceed in parallel with building the current iteration.

Another thing is that you shouldn't look at the team as four people with four different jobs. They should all take responsibility for the whole project. You should encourage them to find overlaps in their skill sets so that they can help out when one of their colleagues is busy. I've picked out some possible areas where your 'idle' team members could help out their colleagues. Your team should be able to pick out oppertunities like these for themselves:

• Your designer should be involved in gathering requirements.
• Showing wireframes and prototypes to your customers should be a part of the requirements gathering.
• Your frontend developer is almost certainly able to produce prototype websites.

Lastly, you shouldn't look on idle time as wasted. Your team can use this time for refactoring or for improving their own skills. The general rule is that you need to dedicate about 20% of your time to refactoring and other improvements to maintain a good quality of work.

Answer 2

It is simple. Just breakdown all the pieces of the software and create task related to them. When the designer complete the design of a piece, the developer take that piece and start the implementation. My recomendation it's to use an agile methodology and establish a good communication channel beetwen all of you, communication is the main thing in a project

Answer 3

Problem you are describing is exactly field of Kanban and Theory of Constraints.

First, you should map your workflow as columns on board and then see where are most of work items sit waiting. It will help your team to know well they should help to improve their performance as a team.

You can explore some other ideas searching by Kanban Method and Theory of constraints terms.