Keep Teams Lean
Developing effectively starts with the team. Of course projects requirements, deadlines and specs all play their part, but if you do not have an effective team for the job, you will go nowhere fast.
In web development teams should be kept lean. If you have a large team, consider breaking them up into groups of 6-8 developers to work on core areas of development. These agile teams allow you to move resources fast, and keep projects moving more efficiently. Very few projects these days in web development require immense teams, and if you find yourself in that sort of environment, you need to question how the project is being managed. I will discuss keeping projects basic and on scope in future posts, but if your project is a large year (or multi-year!!) long build with a giant team, something is wrong. Somewhere, the person in charge does not understand web development.
I am a fan of keeping these teams in flux, so that people do not build information silos, or grow stagnant. For most projects and feature coding, I actually prefer developers work alone or in groups of 2. Of course over time in any company, developers find their niche, and they should be used when projects have tight deadlines. But if there is room with the deadline, consider bringing in a new developer onto that project. This will enforce information sharing, and help in the long run. When a project or feature is out the door, and has bugs or maintenance needs, you now have more than one developer available to work on the code.
As a manager I know this is hard to do, because the safe thing is to give work to the proven developer, but people don’t stay at a job forever, and you may find yourself leaning on new talent when you really don’t have the time.
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