Experiences of R & D managers building teams

Before starting the subsequent content, you still need to declare it in advance. This is not a spam blog, but just to share your feelings and experiences. Of course, we should not think of it as show off. After all, I have been working for more than a decade. It is because I still keep a passion for programming, so I am still fighting for the first line of software development. Well, let's get down to the truth as soon as possible.
Over the past 10 years, I have worked for many small and medium enterprises, including us, finance, and shareholding Systems in China. The only large company is a software outsourcing company, my position in this company is an architect, not a R & D manager. I think, before making a concrete explanation and analysis, I should first express my point of view, that is, the process of building a software team should first consider the nature of the company and the corporate culture, in addition, our deliverables, such as specific software projects, software products, and Operation platforms, or software platforms or tools used within the company, should be taken into account as the personnel cost.
For software companies, it is undeniable that R & D managers, architects, andProgramEmployees all belong to first-line employees of the company. Their output will more or less bring certain benefits to the company. Therefore, these front-line development teams are naturally more valued at the company than other companies. Since I have been working in software companies for more time, this blog will focus on how to build R & D teams in software companies for analysis and experience sharing.
1. Project Team:
This is relatively simple. In general, we will find appropriate developers based on the technical characteristics of the project. For example, first select an experienced developer, it is best to have developers with relevant project experience as the tech leader of the project, and then find the appropriate number of developers and capabilities based on the technical characteristics, total project amount and development cycle. If the company is optimistic about this project, it may even gradually transition it to its own product after a period of time, then, you need to consider the gradient construction of technical personnel in the project at the beginning of the establishment.
2. Product R & D team:
Compared to building a team for a project, building a product R & D team should have more problems to be considered and resolved in advance. Because the source of profit for software products is not limited to the actual revenue from selling a set of products, because software products are basically continuously updated, in addition to charging customers a certain proportion of product maintenance fee each year, you can also charge more consultation fees after the product matures. From this we can see that building a software product team should not simply find suitable developers based on the technical characteristics of the product, but also at the beginning of the establishment of the team, personnel gradient construction and other issues must be taken into account. For example, the team members are divided into high, medium, low, and special skill experts. for high-end technical personnel, they will undertake the most core and critical development tasks from start to end. However, for intermediate technical personnel, in addition to ensuring the smooth implementation of product development, it is also necessary to effectively encapsulate some of the technical difficulties that have been broken through and some reusable basic functions that have been precipitated, so as to greatly reduce the subsequent product upgrade costs and maintenance difficulties.
After several years, with the product maturity and stability, the novice developers have become an important technical backbone of the team, and the outstanding intermediate developers have successfully jumped to senior technical personnel, senior developers can be further upgraded to specialized technical experts or senior consultants. At this moment, the company can make full use of the existing personnel and technical advantages, continue in-depth mining and planning of existing software products and ultimately form their own solutions.
3. Running platform R & D team:
If your company is a very rich and well-known software or Internet company, they tend to be looking after a platform and recruiting people and quick component teams at no cost, in order to become the first person to eat crabs, in this case, the best way is to cooperate with headhunting and find the right high-end technical personnel. For intermediate developers, because the given salary will be significantly higher than the market price, it will not be difficult to set up a quick calculation. However, more problems remain behind the scenes. If the platform can be quickly developed and expected, the problem will not be immediately highlighted, otherwise, the imbalance between the salaries and capabilities of these employees will negatively affect the technical staff of other teams in the company. What Should companies that do not have such ample budgets do? In fact, this is also a problem I am facing. My practice is to find some senior technical personnel who can help us break through the core technology before the product is fully started. At the same time, mining warm-up projects within the company that may use this technology, provided that such projects or small products can still bring certain benefits to the company. As a result, the R & D manager can not only win more time and train the team, but also relieve the pressure because every member can quickly get a seat. Once these warm-up projects are successfully implemented, our R & D team will effectively improve their trust in direct superiors and product managers. Therefore, even if you encounter some problems in the implementation of core products in the future, they may still give the team enough trust and understanding.
This blog mainly introduces its own experiences and ideas in a declarative manner and does not discuss them more. Therefore, no specific solutions are provided for some failed scenarios. It should be noted that I have always adhered to one idea for many years (reference a very good guyFamous sayingAny difficulties, setbacks, and temporary failures are in the face of socialism.
For a simple discussion, please correct yourself. Do not speak out.