If you ask anybody in the software industry to tell you some creative ideas, most of them could give you a big list of ideas fairly easily. However, the ideas themselves won’t bring you any success but the execution of the ideas will. Any failure of delivering ideas is rooted in the bad team design, in another word, you don’t have the right person working on the project at the right time.

If you have all the same team members working on the project during the entire development stage, you are in a dangerous zone for the cost-effective sake. I would like to share my experience of building a good team for web apps:

Development stage of a web app: (Usability and infrastructure)

• 1 full-time Graphic designer (core skills needed: css, html, usability, sense of style)
• 2 full-time Developers (core skills needed: Object-Oriented PHP / AJAX / Javascript / MySQL / server administration)

Close to the end of the development stage: (Start public relationship)

• 1 full-time Developer (core skills needed: OO PHP / AJAX / Javascript / MySQL / Unit test)
• 1 full-time SEO (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)

Beta lauch stage: (all about PR)

• 1 full-time SEO focus on public relation articles (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)
• 1 part-time SEO focus on blog and forum (core skills needed: professional writing)
• 1 part-time developer for ad hoc functions

Remove beta label: (PR and partnership)

• 1 full-time SEO focus on public relation articles (core skills needed: professional writing / in-depth understanding of search engine and backlinks)
• 1 part-time SEO focus on blog and forum (core skills needed: professional writing)
• 1 part-time developer for ad hoc functions
• 1 partership builder (core skills needed: building partnerships across the web app industry)

I’d be a fool if I thought I knew it all. So, please don’t hesitate to share your ideas with us.

Recently, I talked with a project manager who has over 6 years project management experience in big organizations. I asked him that what is the most important skills about managing projects, and his answer was as simple as concentration on solving team members’ problems. He was absolutely right!

If a project goes on exactly as planned, there is no need for managing at all. So, management is all about managing exceptions (i.e. solve problems). Responsibility is all about solving problems, cooperating is all about solving problems, and even resource allocation is all about solving problems. Additionally, the roles themselves in a team will determine what problems the person need to solve.

Meanwhile, the overall performance of a team, in some way, can be measured as its ability to solve problems and the average time length to close them. For the small projects which normally done within 2 weeks, it is easy for the project manager to identify and extinguish problems while for medium to big sized projects, it is getting harder to find out the problems. Therefore, a good project manager has to encourage the team members to tell you all their concerns throughout the entire project life cycle. In that case, you don’t have to dig into each area to drag out the bugs yourself. Moreover, your team members are well motivated and take the ownership of their tasks as well.

It is no need to be panic if you are managing some projects which you don’t understand inside out, coz your team members can support you if you try your best to solve their problems and eliminate their concerns.

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.