How to become a R & D Director-about individuals, processes, tools, and teams 2

How to become a R & D Director-about individuals, processes, tools, and teams-describes the "individuals and processes" of the R & D Director, this article further describes the remaining "tools and teams.

 

3..Tools

Why are tools important to R & D supervisors? For repetitive or time-consuming work, we can use tools to improve the process. For our own abilities or weaknesses in our work, we can also use tools to compensate. Especially in the R & D process, consistency and effectiveness of team tools are directly related to the Team's work efficiency, it is not uncommon for different users of the same tool to use different methods to cause problems such as system integration and functional testing. As a mentor, the R & D Director needs to control and coordinate the tools and usage modes of the entire team to ensure that all teams have a consistent understanding.

There is a law about tools: There is no best tool, only the tool that suits you best, and the tool is called a tool only after you cultivate your habits. I like it very much. I also think that the R & D supervisor needs to sort out the workflow in the team and determine the tools and usage modes that best suit the team according to the process.

Speaking of tools, we need to mention the concept of "ALM" (Application lifecycle management, application lifecycle management). The various tools mentioned later are also centered on the subject of ALM, instead of simply introducing a tool independently. Combined with the concepts mentioned in "agilealm: lightweight tools and agile strategies", the content contained in ALM in the eyes of R & D directors may grow like this:

 

To a certain extent, products (such as codes, requirements, documents, deliverables, etc.) in must be effectively managed and maintained through tools to ensure information flow and tracking, this is a manifestation of this idea in specific tools:

 

For the R & D team, the scope of the project/product is divided into tasks with ticket through requirement analysis, which serves as the basis for R & D. We can see that this ticket runs through the entire Alm, and each step in ALM has a tool to manage the ticket. For example:

• Redmine: a unified platform for project, R & D, and defect management. As a basic Ticket System, it manages the project/product scope and time. Provides a platform and view for problem tracking, progress control, and team collaboration
• Eclipse: a mainstream development tool and a powerful integration platform. You can integrate redmine with redmine mylyn ctor, SVN with subclipse, and Jenkins with Jenkins mylyn connector; you can also integrate Maven, tomcat, and other tools.
• SVN: a configuration management tool, a platform for archiving system code, documents, and resources
• Jenkins: Mainstream continuous integration platform, automated building, service release, and code review tools

In addition, as the R & D Director, knowledge management and communication management for the team are also part of daily work, involving:

• OneNote: the internal knowledge management platform of the Office, which allows you to establish internal enterprise services to share the knowledge of each member in the team and the basic information of the organization level.
• Email: the basic media for communication and collaboration, clarifying details, tracking status, arranging events, and backing up historical records

Many of the above tools are similar in the market and can be used as an analogy. In the future, we will give a detailed introduction to tools. Mastering these tools will become a powerful weapon in the hands of R & D supervisors.

 

Thu.Team

 

Generally, the main roles and data streams of a product line R & D team are as follows. As the core role of the product line, Po (Product Manager) must interact and collaborate with all Parties. PM (Project Manager) converts product line functions into project scope based on project input, and monitors time and cost; Dev (R & D personnel) is responsible for system design and function implementation; QA (Quality Assurance Personnel) verify and confirm Dev products as required, and ensure the correctness of the process.

 

Based on the development needs of the Organization, the R & D Director serves as the three main interfaces from the team perspective:

• External team interface: Dev has direct interaction and collaboration with Po and QA (relatively few with PM). The interaction and collaboration interface is usually the R & D supervisor, which is an external interface.
• Internal team interface: As the dev leader, the R & D Director also has an internal interface for internal developers.
• Organization-level interface: the R & D supervisor is the backbone of the Organization's technical management, and contributes to the organizational process improvement.

The team's external interface work is to reach an agreement on scope management, time management and internal communication mode through the ticket system and Po; on the other hand, we should also use the ticket system and QA for Bug management and problem tracking, and assist QA in final service release.

Internal team interfaces are the focus of R & D team management. I personally think that representative jobs include:

• Selection and implementation of development modes: the mainstream development modes are generally divided into two camps: waterfall and agile. We will not discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the two models here, however, it is necessary for R & D supervisors to make appropriate choices based on the project cycle and characteristics. If you select a staged model for a category such as Waterfall, You can grasp the focus of each stage-gate into the workflow. If you choose agile, implementing agile practices such as stand-up meeting is the daily work of the R & D Director.
• Team code quality assurance: effective means to ensure the code quality during code peer review. There are many methods to expand the code, but they are generally carried out according to the following process. The R & D supervisor leads the code peer review process. It adopts one or more forms of code inspection, review, and collective review, and promotes the methodology and practical methods of code reconstruction.

 

• Organization of system design meetings: a reasonable model for product/project development is to determine the scope of the product/Project and the development personnel determine the development time and stage. As part of the external interface work, the R & D Director should organize system design meetings within the team to specify the preliminary development plan. It usually involves discussing and designing functional implementation solutions as needed. The splitting Function Points are tasks, assigning personnel, and inputting them into the ticket system, and determining the development sequence and schedule based on the tasks on the ticket system.
• Improvement of team work process: the essence of management is continuous improvement. Process improvement usually follows the PDCA cycle proposed by the Quality Management Master Dai Ming. during work, I personally think that regular R & D review meetings are the most effective way to improve team work. The general processes, tools, and activities for review can be referred:

The R & D supervisor's organization-level interface provides process asset definition, R & D team management experience, and process improvement suggestions in department-level and company-level structured decision-making to ensure product/project lifecycle improvement and organization. construction of process assets. Different organizations may have different methods and procedures, which are not described here.

After talking about "individuals, processes, tools, and teams", let's take a look at two aspects of one thing: Importance and closeness. According to the four quadrant analysis method, doing important but not urgent tasks is the foundation of the virtuous circle of the team. However, in reality, we often do important and urgent tasks, and progress management is often not determined by R & D personnel. To ensure the efficient operation of internal teams and meet various requirements of external project managers and product managers, R & D supervisors need to cultivate a balance between external and internal levels.

How to become a R & D Director-about individuals, processes, tools, and teams 2