"The powers that be" is often a phrase used to describe those in a position of authority responsible for work. Distribution of resources would be a way to describe what managers do though resources include time, money and people.
5
votes
5answers
390 views
Is it possible to be agile without use cases and tests?
Rhetoric teaches us that the answer is probably yes. However I feel that we would no longer relate to the vast majority of Agile success stories.
I think that my upper management read the benefits ...
28
votes
18answers
1k views
Why companies don't buy developers entertaining instruments? [closed]
Many times when I get tired of development and my mind doesn't really help me any more (at home), I simply do something entertaining and my mind gets free for more hours of work with higher ...
10
votes
9answers
709 views
Rewarding programmers based on application importance
Is it correct for management to give more importance or reward programmers who have worked on strategic and important application versus someone who has worked on a general application?
Both may have ...
33
votes
3answers
961 views
Blaming the ills of today on the technical debt of yesterday
A surprising number of quality, scalability, and load problems have been occurring on an application I currently support that I did not originally write. Thankfully I have new projects that I have ...
9
votes
8answers
1k views
Career Prospects: Women at Management positions in Software
I was wondering if women working as software developers often face more positive/negative bias in IT than in other fields?
The only reason I ask this question is because personally I have noticed ...
409
votes
34answers
13k views
I'm a manager. How can I improve work relationships and communication with programmers?
A little background first. I'm a project manager at medium-sized company. I started as a CS major and had a little exposure to programming, but after a few months I knew it's not my path, so I ...
1
vote
6answers
261 views
Whether to open-source gigantic idea
So, I have this idea for a huge game that would take years to develop if I did it on my own (with help from friends)
I've learned a lot about game programming, but nowhere near enough to start coding ...
10
votes
2answers
177 views
Getting management approval to invest more in unit testing
I'm a big proponent of unit testing (I'd love to be involved in test driven development). The company I work for seems rather reluctant to spend much effort beyond largely manual end user testing ...
3
votes
3answers
236 views
How do you track Production tasks
I manage a team of coders (5people) that maintain a few modules in a large project.
On top of doing coding, we also do production operational tasks (like doing server housekeeping, batch backlog ...
11
votes
7answers
833 views
What constitutes proper use of threads in programming?
I am tired of hearing people recommend that you should use only one thread per processor, while many programs use up to 100 per process!
take for example some common programs
vb.net ide uses about 25 ...
13
votes
7answers
1k views
How to run developer team meetings?
Our team of 10 developers meet weekly. The meetings are rather boring and not particularly useful. What format/agenda do you utilize to have good meetings?
We meet weekly in the conference room with ...
6
votes
4answers
413 views
What is the best practice to deliver a task to a developer?
As a very new software PM/Team Leader, I just want to know what is the best practice of a way to deliver a full required information about a task to the developers in my team.
In this time, I just ...
26
votes
10answers
914 views
How does one manage an intern effectively? [duplicate]
An intern will be starting with us soon for a couple months before going off to university. The intern is straight-out of high school and has some programming experience, but has never taken a ...
7
votes
6answers
332 views
Tracking hours on a project
Other than the following, are there any helpful (to programmers) reasons to track hours/time on a project down to the "accurate number of hours per week" level?
Reasons:
Beneficial to see how ...
2
votes
4answers
928 views
MBA versus MSIS [closed]
I am considering going back to school for my masters and I've been looking at several avenues I can take. I've been considering either an MBA or an MSIS degree. Overall I know that an MBA is going ...
7
votes
5answers
1k views
Why bother differentiating between functional and nonfunctional requirements?
I understand the difference between the two, but I get questioned by my colleagues of the benefit of labeling requirements as functional or nonfunctional (or transitional). Why bother to do so? He ...
5
votes
3answers
191 views
Is splitting up programming tasks a good idea?
We have a small but growing team at work, and are thinking of doing things differently. We develop websites from scratch and do HTML/CSS/Javascript/PHP/MySQL coding. Currently, we all work on things ...
36
votes
16answers
3k views
What's your suggestion if the company didn't recognize my contribution towards a big project?
I am an entry level developer with 1 year of experience. I have worked on a large scale project which I have played around 80% of the project work, those 5 months were terrible to me - late nights ...
2
votes
2answers
109 views
Recommend self-talk logger software or technique
I observed that discussing with your self about a problem is a fairly common practice. I find it is even better to write what you think. Not only it forces you to materialize your problem, but the ...
21
votes
12answers
2k views
How to manage a developer with good knowledge of programming language but very poor analytical skills
I work as a team lead in a fast-growing services company. There is one developer in my team who's not performing well, and unable to solve even the simplest of the problems without being spoon-fed.
...
10
votes
6answers
2k views
What programming tests can clearly prove developer skill-sets?
SCENARIO: I'm building Dev++, which is designed to provide real testing for developers to prove their skill-set and for recruiters and employers to cut throw all of the "fake resume's" where a ...
6
votes
6answers
612 views
How to bootstrap managerial experience?
Most engineering manager positions require X years of managerial experience in the job description. That means as an individual contributor I can never qualify. But this experience has to come from ...
5
votes
4answers
193 views
Notification framework for object lifecycle
I am looking for an application, framework, or library that would help us with "object life-cycle management".
There are many things that are created for users, departments, and services that, all ...
7
votes
1answer
334 views
“Accept the human condition” is one of lean software development values. Can you elaborate?
The Lean Software and System Consortium 2011 conference, which took place last week, stated the vision and values of lean software development.
Here are the six values of lean software development as ...
2
votes
4answers
250 views
How do you manage passwords in your team for db with multiple env and security constraints?
I don't want any tools, but more methods to help us manage our passwords.
I know this question has been closed, but I think this one, even if it's related, is more a programmers problem than a super ...
15
votes
11answers
1k views
Is going into management a bad way to deal with development burnout?
I'm burnt out on programming. There was recently a job opening in my department for a manager (IT mgr position). The department head encouraged me to apply and thinks I would be a good fit...but I'm ...
7
votes
11answers
698 views
Should a manager (or CEO) in an IT company have an IT background to perform in the organization?
I see that many managers or (even CEOs) running an IT company do not perform as well as those who have IT background. If I may take an example (without judging or pointing fingers), Microsoft's ...
16
votes
11answers
1k views
So they're trying to pull me into management [closed]
I work in a small IT department in a non tech company. My manager recently quit and they are looking for a replacement. I guess since I'm one of those "rare" developers with people skills, the ...
1
vote
2answers
342 views
managing a remote programmer
We have an opportunity to hire an awesome web dev for our team. Problem is, he is leaving for S. America in 6 months. We will still have him onsite for six months. We are thinking of having him work ...
36
votes
8answers
2k views
What are the main things a programmer expects from the senior programmer?
Recently I read the following 5 Types Of Bosses and How To Deal With Them
, which describes the attires of the worst boss. I've just started leading a small team of software developers.
I would like ...
5
votes
2answers
508 views
What makes a great user management interface great?
I'm currently working on user management for a project and while thinking about how I should design this I realised that there's really no standard in how these things look as it often vary a lot from ...
5
votes
8answers
851 views
How do you convince coworkers/stakeholders to try new technologies?
I've got a coworker/manager/stakeholder who is very conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies. I completely understand why: we have a lot of internal expertise with Java, MySQL/Postgres, ...
3
votes
5answers
163 views
New Customer Project - Use Legacy Application or Design Something New
We are starting a new project with a new customer.
We have a legacy application circa 1997 that we are planning on using to satisfy the customer's business requirements.
I have been on the fence as ...
10
votes
10answers
514 views
How to keep management out of our development process
I'm a software engineer in an software development team. The last 3 years we worked for an internal customer on a new product. Now this product is finished we're going to work on major new features ...
13
votes
12answers
1k views
code cowboy on the team
How do you deal with a team member who is senior to you and always jumps on other people's projects and completes them over night or over the weekend? She seems to work 80 hour weeks whether there is ...
24
votes
5answers
1k views
How do you convince management to “invest” in unit tests?
How did you convince your manager to let you unit test?
By "use", I mean being allowed to develop, check-in to source control and maintain the unit tests over time, etc.
Typical management ...
4
votes
1answer
122 views
Separately tracking software failures and faults
I've recently finished reading a couple of Gerald Weinberg books on Quality Software Management. In them, he strongly recommends that organizations distinguish between software failures (which we ...
2
votes
4answers
240 views
Junior Programmer Looking for Project Management Advice & Experience
I am a programming intern at a company in Australia. Is it normal for a programmer to be given a project that has to be completed within a week?
For example, I have been given a task to create a ...
7
votes
3answers
202 views
Effective Information Management on a Personal Level
Have you had problems managing information and found ways to effectively manage information? When I say "manage" I'm talking about storing, grouping, tagging, prioritizing, searching, sharing, etc. ...
5
votes
4answers
378 views
Bounty points for fixing bugs?
Ever heard of a company awarding bounty points for bugfixes? Making team members work to do the most, as some bonus money will be dependent on it? Having them split, or pay bounties to others to ...
4
votes
7answers
373 views
Any good tools for managing list of tasks?
We are changing how we manage low priority admin, support and development tasks. The plan is to have a 'Stack' of tasks, which anyone can pick up if/when they are light on work.
We would like a tool ...
12
votes
5answers
1k views
How should developer performance be measured? [duplicate]
In many companies there is a formal procedure of reviewing employees' work.
For example, a salesperson can stay she'll sell one million units at the beginning of the year. When she comes up for ...
6
votes
5answers
217 views
Should documentation be a company policy or every programmer's responsibility?
I have been struggling lately with the whole subject of documentation at my current position. I am at a point in my programming career in which I feel I have just been birthed into the whole world of ...
3
votes
4answers
585 views
Task scheduling for software development
I'm managing a team of 10 software developers and I'm looking for a tool which can be used to schedule/assign tasks.
I envisage a fairly simple web-based tool which each developer signs into. Here ...
4
votes
5answers
175 views
Advice Required Regarding Creating a Self Learning, Self Organizing Programming Team…
I'm a senior student at my university and chairperson of IEEE Student Branch there. Recently I was thinking of some idea to acquaint students with the professional environment, how software is ...
7
votes
3answers
791 views
How do you manage frequent software releases to multiple clients?
we have a cross-platform middleware product which we typically end up customizing/bug fixing on a per client basis. In some cases, providing updates as often as once/twice per week.
We have a lot of ...
18
votes
8answers
2k views
How to Structure Bonuses for Software Developers? [duplicate]
I am a software developer, and have been asked to define a bonus structure for myself by recommending the metrics that will determine my bonus. I think, once I have defined this bonus structure, there ...
8
votes
6answers
2k views
Best way for a technical manager to stay up to date on technology
My manager asked for a list of technical blogs he should follow to stay current on technology. His problem is he keeps hearing terms that he hasn't heard of (i.e. NoSql, sharding, agure, sevice bus, ...
7
votes
6answers
570 views
How to handle growing QA reporting requirements?
Some Background:
Our company is growing very quickly - in 3 years we've tripled in size and there are no signs of stopping any time soon. Our marketing department has expanded and our IT requirements ...
46
votes
17answers
2k views
How do managers know if a person is a good or a bad programmer?
In most companies that do programming teams and divisions consist of programmers who design and write code and managers who... well, do the management stuff. Aside from just not writing code, ...
