Core work of Software Development Department Manager

From: http://kong-desheng.iteye.com/blog/612908

In the organizational structure of a software company, the department manager of the software R & D department is a very important software R & D manager. Project and product requirement analysis, design, development, and unit testing are all completed under their leadership. Management capabilities of software development department managers, it directly determines the progress and quality of projects and products, personnel morale and stability, internal process efficiency, R & D costs, customer satisfaction, and product adequacy.

An excellent software R & D department manager can bring a thorough revolution to the software R & D department. The final result is that the project progress increases, the quality is significantly improved, the morale of the personnel is high, and the smiling faces are everywhere. However, a poor software R & D department manager can completely destroy a software R & D department. The project is a mess, and team members complain repeatedly, and core staff leave their jobs one after another.

This is the distinct effect of different management capabilities. Therefore, I am already a software R & D department manager. I can use this article to confirm whether my work is correct. In addition, higher-level leaders can use this article to check whether the software R & D department manager is in place.

In my opinion, the core job of a software R & D department manager is personnel management. Almost all things should be done by subordinate personnel rather than the department manager. Therefore, it is the core task of department managers to enable their subordinates to complete their work efficiently and with high quality. This is personnel management.

Now Let's adjust our perspective: If I am a developer and a subordinate to the software R & D department manager, when what conditions are met, can I complete my work efficiently and with high quality?

First, I want to have enthusiasm for work. Simply put, I like to do it here, and I am willing to contribute all my talents to the company's product and project development. This simple idea involves too much content, mainly including:
1) I am satisfied with my salary. If the monthly salary can't even be paid for the rent, who will do it here?
2) The company has development prospects and benefits. If the company keeps losing money, it may collapse one day. Who will contribute their talents to it?
3) Open, equal, and harmonious cultural atmosphere. The company's various processes should be open and transparent, and should not always be operated in a dark box. The company and its employees, managers, and employees are in an equal and cooperative relationship. They must not be a simple employment relationship. They will all think about how to exploit and extract the residual value of their employees. In the project team, within the Department, and between departments, the relationship between people is very harmonious. Do not always look ugly, ignore it, or even speak foul words.
4) successful teams. Everyone is willing to make unremitting efforts for the Goals and honors of the team in a team that wins and continuously wins. No one is willing to be in a team that is in poor chaos, project delays, and bugs.
5) constantly face challenges, learn new technologies and skills, and increase your experience. If you use old technologies and ideas to repeat projects, and perform mechanical repetitive work throughout the day, without efficiency and creativity, everyone will get bored and hate it.

Second, I need to have the skills required to complete my work. Developers mainly face development skills and technical capabilities. Only with the corresponding capabilities can we do a good job. Otherwise, the result can be imagined simply with enthusiasm. Software development is intellectual labor rather than physical labor. With superb technical capabilities, you can increase your work efficiency by several or even dozens of times. Using a few lines of concise advanced code, you can replace hundreds of lines of code from others, it also provides better performance, maintainability, and scalability.

Based on the above understanding, as the manager of the software R & D department, its core job is to improve the enthusiasm and skills of its subordinates.

The following work should be carried out in response to subordinate requirements:
(1) increase employees' enthusiasm:
1) Salary confirmation: regularly evaluates the subordinate's abilities, contributions, professionalism and other factors, and confirms whether employees should apply for a salary adjustment. Generally, this job is performed during performance evaluation. In the Team, the evaluation criteria and evaluation indicators should be made public, and the implementation should be objective and fair, so as to avoid taking turns in the village and avoiding egalitarianism. The salary gap between a star player and a general player must be lifted. After the salary adjustment, you must communicate in person and put the advantages and disadvantages on the desktop. If you do a good job, keep your subordinates. If you do not have enough, give improvement requirements and suggestions.
Generally, the department manager has the right of suggestion for the subordinate salary, but the final right of approval is in the hands of the company boss. As a department manager, we should take every opportunity to improve the position of the R & D department in the company, so that the company attaches importance to R & D, increases its right to speak, and actively seek compensation for its employees.
2) The company has development prospects: department managers generally cannot do anything in this respect.
3) build Culture: department managers are the creators of department culture. The so-called culture is a value. Simply put, we advocate what to do in this department and oppose what to do. The culture of a department is a value that is gradually recognized by all Department personnel under the continuous guidance of department managers. Therefore, department managers should gradually extract and confirm their values and continuously implement them in their daily operations so that everyone in the department can recognize and accept them.
4) successful teams: assign appropriate budget and personnel to the project, pay attention to the progress and quality of the project, and provide all-round technical, management, and resource assistance. Employees are encouraged to provide suggestions and ideas and advocate sharing, exchange and cooperation.
5) create challenges: Raise higher standards for software development processes, development tools, program architecture, data structures, algorithms, and specific logical processing processes, so that employees can meet the challenges, build products and projects with new tools, technologies, ideas, and processes to increase the technical enthusiasm of subordinates.

(2) improving employee competence:
First, the department manager should have a clear understanding of the capabilities of each subordinate. In which aspect should James be good at, in which aspect should he be lacking, and in which aspect should he be proficient. On the basis of this cognition, we can effectively organize human resources and let the most appropriate people do the most appropriate things during the project. Second, we can carry out targeted capacity improvement plans.
Generally, various projects and products in a department use the same or similar technologies. Therefore, department managers need to determine which skills are essential skills, what technologies are intermediate skills and what skills are advanced skills. Essential skills refer to the skills that all team members must master. They are the bottom line of skills. Advanced skills are essential skills required by core team members. Advanced skills are essential skills for star players in the team. After determining skill items, perform regular assessments. Publish the assessment date and requirements, ask employees to pay attention to these skills in their daily work, and confirm the skills they have mastered through the examination.

From the above, we can imagine that the daily work of the software R & D department manager is on the one hand wandering around the company, constantly improving the influence of the R & D department and striving for more benefits for the employees of the Department; on the other hand, it is used in various project teams to provide various guidance and help to consolidate the team's values. Through regular skill tests and performance evaluations, every member of the team is guided to make continuous progress and improvement. This is what a good software R & D department manager should do.