Questions tagged [team-management]
This tag is for all questions related to leading and managing project teams and project team members either directly or indirectly.
520
questions
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What are the names for basing structures on roles first or people first?
I am hoping to establish whether there are technical terms, used in project management, for two different basic approaches to structure and roles; and if so what these terms are.
Sometimes a business ...
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45
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Handling Dynamic Sub-task Estimation in Jira without Double-Counting Story Points
My team and I have recently adopted Scrum, and we've chosen Jira as our primary tool for managing sprints and backlogs. As we navigate our sprint planning, we're grappling with an issue related to the ...
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168
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When is it resonable to ask a team member to report on their work at the end of the day?
One team member is elusive in describing the work they've done in the past day during our standup, or the work reported doesn't justify the lack of progress on the work they've been assigned.
Is it ...
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vote
1
answer
81
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How to handle split team Sprint needs?
I'm Project Manager at my company, and we are trying to use the Agile Scrum methodology to release a software product.
We have a specific milestone (let's call it the creation of a "prototype&...
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Challenges of switching an established external dev team [closed]
Context
This is related to a question I asked regarding the challenges of a small company working with an external dev team which had some great feedback. For context, I am a PO of a small company in ...
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Challenges of a small company working with an external dev team from another country
I am a PO at a small company in the UK who are in the early days of SaaS development (using Agile Scrum). It was recommended that we use the external dev team which we have now instructed. This team ...
- 137
3
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3
answers
223
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Blockers and Impediments
At our standup, I always ask about blockers and impediments and sometimes this results in other members of the team offering help. Sometimes it turns into a rant which isn’t terrible but does ...
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2
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156
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How do you get multiple separate software development teams to unify their best practices? [closed]
We have several reasonably well functioning small software development teams working on different areas of the business. Each team has its own lead and roughly 8 other developers on it. The teams have ...
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248
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Kanban estimates in JIRA to calculate throughput
I am using kanban methodology to manage the flow of a project. However, when new specifications come up, there is some variability in them, meaning that some of them can take 3-4 days while others can ...
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3
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490
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How can I close an Epic with open defects?
I have an Epic. Some defects are closed, but one defect is still opened and deferred until the next release. How can I close the current Epic since one ticket is still not closed?
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2
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175
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Best way to make up for lost time
As a project manager mistakes are inevitable but some mistakes cause major set backs and really hurt the project. One thing that is coming up quite frequently is time and materials. Our system does ...
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122
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Collaboration of product owner and team
How often do the product owner and the team leader/manager typically meet for discussing the product and the vision as well as the roadmap?
Additionally are the skills that each member of the team ...
- 101
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223
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When a development team doesn't want to go through an OKR exercise
I work with multiple teams, whereby the company culture has been somewhat command and control, and also "shielding" the team from any sort of "management", "leadership", ...
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6
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468
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How to make my team follow the Scrum methodology?
I recently joined a new company as a scrum master. I have six years of experience as a web developer and the last two years as a lead developer.
I did have some experience and I am quite good as a ...
- 315
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216
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What to do with a team that will never evolve into an agile one?
Does agility assume that any group of people can evolve into an agile team with the help of a Scrum Master, or is it possible that some teams will never evolve and it is therefore not possible for the ...
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82
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Skill Matrix with various Technology [closed]
I am creating a skill matrix for my team in a excel sheet. My team consists of Developers & Testers.
I've included Technologies (like Phyton, cobol etc), Testing, Tools (jira) & Methodology (...
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4
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Is there a healthy interval for ratio between developers and non-developers in a SCRUM team?
I have recently read this article about a good ratio between developers and software quality assurance people and I am wondering if there is a similar concept for developer / non-developers in a SCRUM ...
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55
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Unfilled project team roles for grant proposal
I'm finalizing a proposal for a 2-year U.S. SBIR federal grant. The RFP asks that we provide names and resumes for the entire project team. I have 4 of 5 roles filled, with one TBD. Admittedly, it's ...
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49
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What is a good free or cheap Team Project Management, Team Communication & Team Collaboration Script? [closed]
I have been looking for a very good Team Project Management Script that includes Team Communication, Team Collaboration, Projects & Tasks, Ability for Team Members to Assign Themselves to Projects ...
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1
answer
150
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Do we really want tools for our work? [closed]
I am running a small team and I am performing perfectly in my work.
But a few days ago one of my friends told me that we should try a tool or software package that will help increase productivity and ...
4
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5
answers
293
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How to approach this: A team member with Good technical skills but weak in other areas
My team consists of 7 people and I am the project manager. A teammate of mine has good technical skills, but he struggles with documenting the results of his work and delivering documents to the next ...
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2
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3
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167
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Problems with Pair Programming and introspective developers
I know two very good developers. They are capable of solving any kind of problem and explaining how they came to the solution and how it works. They are also very receptive to observations after they ...
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Show timebased plan and the people involved at each activity
Disclaimer: I am not a project manager, just a software developer, so I may need some help wording this to make it acceptable.
I was talking to a company who want me to do some consulting work, ...
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2
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101
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one of my colleagues is difficult to deal with [closed]
My colleague is very difficult to deal with. I was recently provided the task of managing my colleagues and it is very difficult to gain their attention and ask to fulfil a task as they do not like ...
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3
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168
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How to do sprint commitments in a team of specialists?
After a re-org we ended up with one larger team of specialists:
designers
user experience engineers
3D artists (we are in gaming)
developers
Great, cross-functional team! BUT they are all ...
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1
vote
1
answer
92
views
Which is the better general guideline, "prefer standardization" or "don't care about standardization"?
In my software development team, we have established some guidelines to help single developers take decisions on their own. Recently, some discussion arose around one of those guidelines. It deals ...
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369
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How to combine OKRs with agile development (Scrumban)?
I recently read John Doerr's book about OKRs (objectives and key results). While doing so, I was asking myself whether and how the process would fit in my company. We are currently using Scrumban: The ...
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2
votes
1
answer
207
views
How to deal with member that has excessive ownership
I'm currently leading an amateur team of around 20 working on a relatively not-so-small side project, and we plan to deliver the result to thousands of users after a month or two.
However, there is ...
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2
votes
2
answers
422
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Using Retrospectives to Influence Process
I've been encouraging my current team to adopt process and workflow changes to be more agile. We have our first retrospective coming up and I'm looking for some advice on how to conduct the ...
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27
votes
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answers
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Developers can't see what they're doing wrong
I am a tech project manager, and I recently moved to America after 13 years in Europe where I worked as a software engineer. I worked for important customers and developed in any sort of environment.
...
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4
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358
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Splitting a developer "team" based on products
We have a full-time developer team that consists of 3 Backend developers, 2 Mobile developers, 2 Frontend Developers, and 1 QA. Let me give them simple code-names: B1, B2, B3, M1, M2, F1, F2, QA.
Each ...
0
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1
answer
107
views
How to visualize communication work?
I have a QA team report directly to me, their day to day tasks are:
Correct the new specifications together with tech leads/PM
Write test plan
Discuss with teammates during implementation phases
...
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4
votes
7
answers
263
views
Agile: Work on PBI Stories By Backlog Priority
We are working on an Agile Scrum team.
They mention it is good practice to work on PBI tasks first by Sprint Backlog Priority in code development.
Sometimes,
When some of the first Priority stories ...
- 131
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votes
6
answers
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views
Which is better: large feature branches or merging frequently? Which is better small work items vs large work items?
My team has problems pushing work items through all the stages in the Kanban board to done.
The work items hit code review and pile up and stay there for a long time. The following stage (the QA stage)...
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2
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1
answer
116
views
How to asses possibly lacking individual performance as a new manager?
I started at a new company two months ago, for the first time in a management position. And it's a difficult situation.
I have a (software development) team member who has a history of bad performance ...
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3
answers
145
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How to ensure good engineering management of projects involving specialized front-end and back-end teams?
Our project is a single-page app powered by a REST API on the back-end serving JSON, nothing new or unusual about that.
We have specialized front-end and back-end developers that are handling ...
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3
answers
185
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Does such physical-whiteboard-per-team management process exist in the literature?
Does the following sound similar to some established (now or in the past) practice?
One big whiteboard per team.
Tasks are written down in a single short sentence(e.g. "refactor Frubnicator" ...
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141
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Team management to get something streamlined
I am unofficially given an opportunity to lead a very strong technical team.
We work in 24*7 shifts there. We have shift handover happening twice a day.
Currently we are just preparing a set of tables ...
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13
votes
8
answers
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Developer keeps underestimating tasks time
This is one of my first projects in charge, and I am leading a team of 2 dev, a senior and a mid-level one.
The mid-level developer is underestimating his time on most tasks. He is telling me that ...
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145
views
Is it a good idea to share source code between team?
I have a strategy to split the development teams into feature team,
To make each team isolate and full-stack.
Each team may have 1-5 people and may switch after that feature is done.
This is a single ...
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votes
2
answers
2k
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Management wants to start doing "1 on 1"s as "2 on 1"s. Good or bad idea?
I work at a start up, and we've just promoted a few interested and apt senior engineers into managerial roles. Additionally, we've gone on a bit of a hiring spree and need to start doing a better job ...
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vote
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73
views
How to effectively plan the team for different tasks in same project?
We are a team of around 12 developers (2 leads / 3 mid level /5 juniors / 2 designers) and we are planning to have following teams.
We are into web development.
R&D Team - Team that will do POC ...
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356
views
How can we simulate hard deadline?
We're working on an ongoing project.
We have internal deadlines like sprint but it's not a hard deadline.
Nothing will happen if we don't reach the internal goals.
The team is starting to get used to ...
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141
views
Problems with a decision on layoffs
Being a mid-level manager, I was told by my supervisor that a drastic staff reduction in the company is due in a couple of months.
Most of my subordinates will be laid off.
He specifically told me not ...
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483
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How to (Agile) manage a fairly complex IT PoC?
I'm a technical lead employed by in an agile IT organization where most teams observe Scrum.
I'm 2 weeks into a task of building a proof-of-concept of a service that is fairly sizable and complex (...
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votes
4
answers
435
views
What agile process promotes the team to assign tasks to individual developers istead of individuals assigning tasks for themselves?
Developer /architect / developer 20 years experience. I did an experiment at my previous project where I created a scrum-like process but we decided developers to not pick directly their tasks, but ...
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2
answers
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How do I stop constantly having to ask my manager for permission?
Context
I work in a small company where I build websites.
There are two owners.
One is responsible for designing the websites and other things.
The other one is my direct manager and does all the ...
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1
vote
1
answer
56
views
PM's monthly report includes the stats of the work hours, bug fix per developer
We are a cross functional product development teams that does monthly release.
There are 3 teams work together: my team works on web-development, team B works on embedded system and team C bridges us ...
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3
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149
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Hired a mid level consultant who is producing junior level work. We're 2 weeks in. Should I recommend letting her go or giving her time to ramp up?
Things to consider:
She's getting paid at a level that implies that she is a very experienced mid level consultant
She doesn't ask questions, even though I very clearly make it known that I'm ...
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votes
2
answers
486
views
How can a small team of devs maintain many products at the same time?
I work as a software engineer in a team of 5 devs that develop and maintain 4 different projects
I'm mainly responsible for 2 products:
a "trashware" product, and some part of a legacy ...
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