DEV Community: Mihai

About JonnyGit - Velocity Measures

Mihai — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 09:03:04 +0000

Here comes our second post from the “About JonnyGit” series. Today we want to tell You about the first of our three pillars that together form our solution for software development leaders: Velocity.

Velocity is one of the most important measurements in agile software development to illustrate the rate of progress that a team makes. Without knowing the velocity of Your team, planning will be impossible.

The metrics we use will help You understand what went well in the past and where You have process bottle-necks. This will enable You to answer common questions, that take a central role in Your planning process:

Are my engineering workflows build to ensure momentum?
How do my KPIs develop over time?
What is the impact of each individual to a project?

But Velocity is not just important for Your planning process, it’s also the main factor for efficiency. With JonnyGit You can increase the efficiency of Your dev team by up to 30%.

If You want to know more about Velocity, just visit our website!

About JonnyGit - Our Mission

Mihai — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 09:00:50 +0000

In our new series “About JonnyGit” we would like to show You what our product is all about and what value we can add to Your company. In this first post, we will tell You about our mission.

Our main goal is to help software development leaders to tackle the challenges their team encounters. We will help You understand their needs and motivations so You can bring out the best in Your team.

Software development can be a very complex process, it might be better described as creation. We are there to close the information gap between Creator and Team Leader. Our powerful analytics will provide You with valuable insights into every little step Your developer takes, so You can give helpful feedback to accelerate the workflow.

By focusing on prescriptive analytics, we go beyond basic performance indicators and identify behaviors and patterns that might act as barriers. You then have all the information You need to build Your very own high performance team!

Outsourcing Software Development

Mihai — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 08:59:04 +0000

20% to 25% of all outsourcing relationships fail within two years. Within 5 years it’s up to 50%. One major problem is that the outsourcing manager has no clear overview of what’s going on at the other end of the deal. We help You overcome this problem and establish a trustful relationship to the outsourced development team.

Our reports help You understand how Your resources are deployed and used in a project and how this influences delivery. With our help You finally get an answer to Your most common questions:

Why am I billed for engineers that worked less on my project?
What skill have the engineers that are working on my software?
How is the development workflow of the team?

With the help of Jonny Git outsourcing Your software development is no longer a blackbox!

To learn more about how Jonny Git can help You with outsourcing teams, check out our website: https://jonnygit.com/managing-software-development-outsourcing/

outsourcing #softwaredevelopment #JonnyGit

How do you keep your developers happy

Mihai — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 11:32:03 +0000

In today’s market, it’s all about software. There is software behind Spotify, behind Smart Windows or inside your car. For start-ups and already successful companies, this means that their products are an output of high-functioning, creative and motivated developers. Without excellent work from them, there is no way the product will be either groundbreaking nor segment leading nor will it provide value to potential users. To put it more drastic: The developers decide if your product will be successful or quickly forgotten. So, the main goal for managers all around is to find the best developers, get them onboard and the most important step: keep them happy and motivated. This leads to the question: How do you ensure happiness and motivation for your developers? Great question, so let’s dive into it.

The first step towards motivating and keeping employees happy is surely also about money. If the money isn’t right, the employee will feel undervalued and leave for a better paying job. They are not to blame for this, after all money rules the world. In order to pay the right wages, you should know and understand the market value of your developer.

There might be some developers who have not yet understood their own market value. As manager, you could use this to offer them less, but you really shouldn’t. It won’t take much time until the developer understands how much he’s really worth and that’s when your relationship is already over. Developers are actively being offered jobs, so you should always pay a competitive wage. Not one Cent less. Of course, most can’t throw money at their employees, there is a budget that needs to be kept in mind. So if no more money can be offered, what else can be done, to improve the personal well-being of the developers?

Use the best available gear. Ever tried to use the first versions of voice-controlled devices that would simply refuse to understand anything you said? Or tried to use a streaming service on an old Computer? Then you know there is nothing more frustrating than slow and outdated tech. So, for the sake of your developer’s state of mind: Please use the newest technology that is available. This really isn’t the right place to start saving money.

Give your developer responsibility. Let them decide what they want to work on and how they are going to do it. Let them call the shots. Of course, some guidance is needed, but don’t make the boundaries for them too narrow. By giving your developers a bit room, they will work more effectively, and your product will improve. Trusting their decisions is not only logical, after all they are the experts when it comes to software, it’s also what you hired them for. Empowering your developers to make their own decisions will not only improve their motivation, it also takes away a big chunk of work for you.

Next up: Deadlines. Setting unrealistic deadlines might be one of the biggest mistakes managers can make. It will have a negative effect on your developers and also on investors, who aren’t really known to be very forgiving when it comes to burning their money. Some might say pressure makes diamonds and that is true, the only problem is you’re not applying pressure to coal but to human beings. There are some that feel motivated and work best under pressure, but that’s not true for all of them. So when setting deadlines, always take the developers opinion into account and work together with them to come to a realistic and achievable conclusion. You want burn downs not burn outs.

Give your developers the opportunity to learn new skills. If you have someone that likes to be challenged, that’s a trait that you should always try to feed. Let them try out a new framework, learn a new coding language and improve their overall skill set, even if it’s something that doesn’t seem to fit into their role or your company in the beginning, it might be exactly what you need in the future. Promoting continuous learning will help your developers to keep their curiosity and a curious mind is a happy one.

One question that often arises for a manager in a workplace is how to treat everyone as fair as possible. Good question and an important one. If you want your developers to run away, just give them unfair evaluations. If you want them to stay, and keep them happy, hold them accountable. Point out where they did an amazing job, but also talk to them about what did not go well. If everyone gets the same treatment, performance reviews can accelerate the workflow and improve the overall atmosphere. So don’t shy away from holding your developers accountable, but make sure you keep things fair and square.

Keep things flexible. You know why some students are better in school than others? Are they smarter? Maybe. More ambitious? Also, maybe. Often they were lucky enough that their own cycle just fits better to school hours, than others. In order to boost motivation and productivity, let your developers choose their hours themselves. Some work best in the morning, some better in the evening and then there are some who work best in the night. Software development is a creative process, don’t kill it by enforcing office hours. Set core hours instead, when everyone needs to be online, so important matters can be discussed. This is one of the strongest arguments for the continuous shift towards asynchronous development including asynchronous dailys.

You see, keeping developers happy and motivated really isn’t sorcery. You don’t necessarily need a ping pong table or a sushi chef at your office, even though this can be a nice addition. Keep your developers involved at all decisions you make and let them have responsibility on their own and you have already taken a big step towards their happiness.

software development #work-culture #mindset

Accountability in Software Development

Mihai — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 10:35:11 +0000

The short and cold days, limited social contacts and not knowing when life will go back to normal is a huge weight on everyone. Often it limits the motivation and the output. This needs to be remembered by managers, but it should not stop them from holding people accountable for their work.

Managers all around face the same question: How do I hold people accountable for their work, when I don’t actually see them working? Out of fear to treat the employees unfair, they shy away from performance reviews. It might be a noble thought, but can actually have the opposite effect.

In a workplace environment everyone wants to be held accountable- for their good and their bad work. If everyone is treated that way, a feeling of fairness is established and it will boost the progress.

To read more about the importance of accountability, check out this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2020/08/30/how-to-manage-the-work-when-you-cant-see-people-working-5-new-takes-on-accountability/?sh=56515bb42b4d

At JonnyGit we provide leaders of software development teams with all the needed information to have fair performance reviews that help everyone improve.

accountability #leadership #JonnyGit

About JonnyGit

Mihai — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 10:33:31 +0000

In our new series “About JonnyGit” we would like to show You what our product is all about and what value we can add to Your company. In this first post, we will tell You about our mission.

mission #softwaredevelopment #JonnyGit

How to deal with information asymmetry with outsourcing providers in tech?

Mihai — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:46:03 +0000

In my many conversations with leaders of development teams I have experienced all kinds of development constellations. One that many felt most satisfied with was the outsourcing of an entire dedicated development team. This is cost-effective, flexible and fits more easily into the overall company structure.

The main advantage is that these people are fully committed to your cause and feel part of the whole organization.

If this is something you are considering, this article might help you: https://medium.com/devtechtoday/dedicated-software-development-team-a-winning-approach-for-outsourcing-c0874141291c

There is one issue that is often problematic, and it is related to the systematic distrust of working with outsourcing providers. Maybe you have heard of the principal-agent-theory and it covers exactly this. You have to get a grip on the information asymmetry.

What is your opinion on this? How do you tackle this at your organization?