We have a relatively small team of developers with less than 5 people in it and a project manager. What do you think is the typical set of responsibilities a project manager should have in such a team ? I am looking at the thing more from the developer's perspective and want to know what should I expect from the manager and what should I care about myself (e.g. code quality, coordination etc.).
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In short: get things out of developers' way. In more detail:
Note, it all much depends on who do you have on board. I haven't mentioned things like working on best development practices (although I personally do this too) since you stated you can take care of this stuff. Anyway it all comes down to the people. PM in general should cover all gaps you have in the team, either with their own hands if they have enough time or by getting more people to the team. |
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You cannot undervalue the role of a PM, even for a small sized project. While we assume this is more simple because you have only five or so resources, it could still be a complex project, dealing with complex procurement issues, very tough customer, environment or legal concerns, etc. I have found that in small teams a PM is named who is largely a functional/technical SME and not someone who has strong PM and/or leadership skills. And the PM rigor suffers accordingly. (I am not saying that a SME cannot be a strong PM, typically they just have not had time to build this level of competency when they're assigned to manage a small project, I have found.) So I agree the PM tasks will not consume a full FTE, as Pawel suggested, but I would ensure the PM rigor is up to speed and is appropriate for the complexity of the project before I assign other roles to the PM. Then pitching in where needed is appropriate. |
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Essentially a PM role in a small team is the same as in a larger team ("What do project managers do all day?"). The difference is that they are not likely to have any admin or support staff and more than likely to either run several projects at once or wear multiple hats within the team. Wearing multiple hats in software development can mean programming, writting specs, eliciting requirements, QA, covering for other business functions: sales, marketing, public relations, office management, payroll and et cetara. All of this in addition to managing the project itself. |
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know your customer know your team understand the right level of quality make sure the product beats the customer's expectation |
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