On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 4:34 AM, Grant <emailgr...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >> I'll be getting my feet wet with this shortly. Any other tips >>> >> regarding the management of one or more programmers working on >>> >> various small web projects? Maybe workflow or any key procedures >>> >> a newbie manager should follow? >>> > >>> > You can get away with almost anything except these two things: >>> > >>> > Do not micro-manage >>> > Do not tell them how to do what they do >>> >>> Could you give me an example of this last one? >> >> - I see you are using Perl with hashrefs to do function xyz. Have you >> considered (i.e. I would like you to) using $INSERT_SOMETHING_HERE? >> >> - Fiddling with the roadmap. Somehow, this always ends up like the >> homeowner overriding the architect and trying to get the roof up >> before the walls. >> >> - Giving "advice" on the process such as saying how awesome a concept >> stakeholders and product owners are in Scrum. But they use >> ExtremeProgramming. >> >> - Wanting to personally review the code often. I've seen some managers >> want to do this daily. >> >> - Get personally involved on their level. >> >> >> All these things class as interference. Managers and owners who do this >> have miles of justifiable reasons for doing so, but it's always hogwash >> - they interfere, plain and simple. > > This is really interesting to me. Is there a forum/website/book with > more gritty, practical advice like this on managing programmers? > These are the kinds of mistakes I will definitely make if someone > doesn't tell me not to. > > Could you tell me really briefly what a manager *should* do? > > I think I'll try to manage a single programmer working few hours and > see how it goes. My asking stupid questions is due to my lack of > experience and there's only one way to fix that.
I'd probably suggest reading The Mythical Man-Month. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month -- :wq
