A question came up recently on LinkedIn concerning how best to manage multiple development resources on a project.  This has been a quandary from the beginning of IT time.

 

 

 

 

PM Perspective

 

 

 

 

As a Project Manager, I am managing from a detailed project schedule and have specific resources - Team Leads, App Developers, Architects, BAs, Data Integrators and Data Specialists - all assigned to specific tasks and it's my job to ensure they know what they should be working on. Now, with that said, most of my recent implementations – even though they have been large $$ and timeframe projects - have involved only one or two development resources.  If it's more than one key dev resource on the project then the most senior resource is acting in a Team Lead role and is responsible in part for ensuring that the junior resource is being mentored/overseen on the project. ??

 

 

 

 

Weekly team meetings and formal weekly status meetings and the formal weekly status report help to ensure that everyone on both the delivery team and customer team understands the current status and knows what they should be doing.

 

 

 

 

Locking Down the Code

 

 

 

 

Small projects aren’t usually going to be too much of an issue or even larger projects that only require one or two developers like I mentioned above.  However, large projects requiring many developers can present a huge headache for those responsible for overseeing the implementation as well as the individual in charge of monitoring the code. 

 

 

 

 

In a past life I served as a Configuration Manager on the Guaranteed Student Loan project through the US Department of Education.  I was not only in charge of all change management activities and leading the Configuration Control Board in a formal capacity, but I was also tasked with locking down the source code for the project that involved approximately 60 developers.  It was a mainframe-based COBOL environment with no formal way to lock down the code, so I had to develop my own software to audit the status of the code and my own automated processes for checking the code in and out of the dev environment as needed.

 

 

 

 

The bottom line is that there has to be a formal process for monitoring the code status and checking it in and out for development work – especially when there are a larger group of developers working on an implementation.

 

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

 

 

Customer satisfaction, project success, and the overall project budget and timeline are too critical to leave to luck.  They must be held in high esteem as they are critical to our company’s financial well-being and, in the long-run, our own job security. 

 

 

 

 

If the code for a project is not monitored closely, huge setbacks can occur.  Two developers modifying the same code accidentally should never happen, but it can…and with disastrous results.  The fix may be easy, or it may end up adding 2-3 weeks to the project timeline.  The Project Manager must ensure that the software environment integrity is maintained and likely needs the help of the Application Development Manager to make sure that happens.