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Working with software dev teams
The document discusses how to effectively work with software development teams as a non-technical manager. It recommends learning about the roles on a typical team like business analysts, developers, testers, and sysadmins. It also suggests understanding team members' motivations and possible conflicts. Key technical concepts to learn include functional requirements, non-functional requirements, architecture diagrams, common terms, and software delivery processes. The document emphasizes communication, documentation, and avoiding micromanaging the technical specialists.
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Working with software dev teams
- 1. Working with software developmentteams Jose Miguel Gutierrez
- 2. Objectives § Know thetechnical people you will have to interact with. § What technical information and other considerations should I know to for a project I will work on? § Know how software is delivered and maintained.
- 3. I present you.. Your team I present you .. your team
- 4. A typical software developmentteam (roles)
- 6. BAs (Business Analysts) § Whatthey do: Understand what the customer really needs and express those needs as requirements. § Common motivators: Define features that will surpass the customer expectations. § Common problems: Get specifications on time.What the customer really needs? § Common conflicts: Need to change these requirements but I will get in trouble with the team.
- 8. Developers (Devs, Software Engineers) § Whatthey do: Let’s build it! § Common motivators: I am going to use the latest and coolest tools? § Common problems:What is this project/application for? Whatever. § Common conflicts: Nobody understands our job! It will take more time because *&^%&* otherwise the application will have problems later.
- 10. QAs (Quality Assurance, Testers) § Whatthey do: Let’s break it! (Using manual and automated testing tools) § Common motivators: I am going to find a lot of issues/bugs in this application. The application is stable now! (high quality) § Common problems:The requirements are not clear. I only will test when the project is complete (Quality Control instead of Quality Assurance). § Common conflicts:Testing takes time! You cannot bypass QA!
- 11. DBAs (Database Admins) § Whatthey do: Responsible of the databases (data, database servers, configuration, security). § Common Motivators: Security and performance. § Common problems:What is this database for? Whatever, let’s apply global database policies. § Common conflicts:You can’t change databases without N authorizations.
- 12. SCRUM works muchbetter with this!! An automated software delivery process ..
- 13. DevOps § What theydo: Let’s improve our delivery process with new tools! § Common Motivators: How can I make this delivery process as fluid and smart as possible? § Common problems/conflicts: It doesn’t matter if we break something in the delivery process we will fix it we think in the long term!
- 15. SysAdmins (Systems Administrators) § What theydo: Ensure that the uptime, performance, resources, and security of the computers they manage meet the needs of the users. § Common Motivators: Let’s have every server tuned and connectivity and configuration updated and tracked. § Common problems/conflicts:Why everyone wants to change the configuration of my servers? We scheduled this server config update but we haven’t informed anyone.
- 16. How to communicate betterwith software development teams? Do I need to learn to code? Short answer: It depends? .. Most of the times NO.
- 17. Why not?? § Codingis interesting .. however mastering it requires time and real world experience. § Fast evolving .. even developers complain about that. § Development teams won’t enjoy micromanagement .. they are the specialists. Strongly technical, pride on their craftmanship § You will be at risk to be judged as a developer instead of a manager.
- 19. So .. whatshould I do?? Let’s say you are going to be a new manager in a software project: § Learn some general technical concepts § Know the team members profiles and motivations § Know the team dynamics and possible conflicts § Learn the “common” terms § Request an application walkthrough § Review the high level documentation
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- 22. Non-Functional Requirements § Performance (e.g.each request in less than 200ms) § Scalability (e.g. should support up to 2000 concurrent users) § Capacity (e.g. should support 500 concurrent users regularly) § Availability (e.g. should be available 99.5% of the time) § Recoverability (e.g. what happens if you lose connection) § Maintainability (how easily you can change and improve the app) § Security (e.g. HTTPS, should address top 10 OWASP security risks) § Regulatory (should accomplish tech standards for the industry) § Usability (intuitive, easy to use) § Interoperability (connect and share information easily with other applications)
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- 24. Knowtheteam membersprofiles andmotivations Know your teammembers, go to lunch or similar activity, break the ice, feel their motivation level and what can you do to improve things (tools, training, food, leisure activities)
- 25. Knowtheteam dynamicsand possibleconflicts Day to daymonitoring: capture the quality of interactions in the team .. There are fights? There is trust? Are there bottlenecks? .. Collaboration and Trust are specially important in Agile
- 26. Learn the “common” terms Becomefamiliar with the most used business and technical terms.Who can help me to learn this common language?
- 27. Requestanapplicationwalkthrough Take notes andask questions not only about regular functionality but also about non-functional specifications
- 28. Review the highlevel documentation Where? Confluence
- 31. JIRA Project Tracking ..and Collaboration Software
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- 35. 1.CodeReview/2.CI(Continuous Integration) Terms: Repository (e.g.:Git + Bitbucket), CI (e.g.:TeamCity)
- 38. 3.TestinQA/4.ApprovalinUAT/5.Goto PROD! Terms: Environments, AutomatedDeployment (e.g.: Octopus)
- 40. MonitoringandDiagnosis Terms: Monitoring tools(e.g. Splunk)
- 41. IncidentsResponse Terms: Incident managementtools (e.g. PagerDuty)
- 42. IncidentsResponse Terms: Incident managementtools (e.g. PagerDuty)
- 43. Disclaimer § This isjust ONE aspect of handling projects (work with a technical team). § There are other stakeholders to deal with and knowledge/tools to apply. But this is out of the scope of this presentation.
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