I’ve been doing software developing for 8 years now, and the reason I want to be in this industry is as simple as I love it. So, I enjoy my every single working day, and amazingly I never miss any deadlines for all my 31 projects throughout the 8 years. Early this year, I was promoted to the role of CTO, and then I have to do a lot of management work. To be honest, I really miss the days when I only need to concentrate on coding.

Bizroof platform is the first project I am in charge of after my promotion. We’ve got 8 people working on it full time, including 3 PHP developers, 2 javascript developers, 1 graphic designer, 1content writer and myself (project manager). Initially, I did write a project plan which states deadlines for each phase with time tolerance. Also, we’ve got daily and weekly meetings to help us understand our positions. There is no doubt that all those project management stuff helps to maintain a decent delivery speed. However, it makes most team members focusing on delivery with less creative ideas, and people get bored quite easily. So, I recently stopped using the initial plan and told my team members that they ONLY need to deliver stuff when they are comfortable with it. Also, we measure their performance based on quality rather than quantity.

Project management is all about managing exceptions. In another word, the project manager’s job is to try the best to help others solve their problems and to make your team members enjoy their work, and then your members will build their confidence and ready to contribute.