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Development Management *

Planning, tracking and monitoring

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Productivity in Silence: The Ideal of Eliminating Meetings

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 10 min
Views 123

In the software development industry, a lot of time and resources are spent on meetings. Many managers have calendars filled with meetings most of the time.

According to a study by Atlassian, the average worker spends up to 31 hours a month on unproductive meetings. That's about 8 hours a week, which is equivalent to a full work week for one employee out of a team of five people every month. If we convert this into working days, it means that on average four people are working, and one is constantly in meetings. This does not take into account additional time spent on informal discussions and ad-hoc meetings, which further reduce the time available for direct work on product creation. Thus, developers actually spend less than half of their working day on direct development, which is a worrying sign for any organization striving for innovation and efficiency.

Personally, I don't like meetings. I always try to minimize communication if an issue can be resolved without a face-to-face meeting. I apply this rule both at work and in life. For example, I prefer to refuel my car using an app, and I try to order food and other services without needing confirmation from an operator, and I did this even when such an approach was not so common. If I need to find a place, I will open a map in the app, instead of asking passers-by for directions.

My reluctance to waste time or be inefficient has resulted in our software development department carefully monitoring the time our developers spend on meetings. On average, a developer has only 2 hours and 15 minutes of mandatory meetings per week, including four 15-minute stand-ups, a 30-minute one-on-one meeting with a manager every two weeks, and 60 minutes for various meetings such as planning and demonstrations. The rest of the time, about 5 hours and 45 minutes, is spent on other activities in MS Teams, including chats and individual calls. Although we believe that this time should also be optimized, we focus mainly on key meetings to ensure that every minute spent is valuable.

In this article, I will consider the approaches I use and the ideas that motivate me to minimize the costs associated with meetings.

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Total votes 8: ↑8 and ↓0 +8
Comments 0

The Rule of Handling Tasks That Never Get Done

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 3 min
Views 795

This week, I was reflecting on a recent one-on-one chat with a manager in my division about keeping our backlogs clean and dealing with those tasks that just keep getting pushed back.

I jot down my thoughts and decided to share them with you. It's a common issue, right? Tasks hanging around, always getting postponed. Let's talk about the mess this creates in our backlogs and how to handle it the right way.

Check out my latest article where I dive into the art of backlog hygiene. Trust me, your team will thank you for it!

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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
Comments 0

When It's Important to Stop Your Team's Engineers from Writing Code

Reading time 5 min
Views 785

Launching a startup often means navigating through stringent constraints, particularly in the early stages where resources are limited. For technical founders, who usually possess deep expertise in certain technical domains, the inclination might be to hire a team of senior engineers—considering you often end up with only one expert in each domain, it might be risky to delegate entire segments to junior specialists.

This situation typically leads to a small team where each member is more skilled than the founder in their respective field. This raises an important question for the technical lead: what role should you play in this team? 

While the apparent answer might be task setting and quality control, prompting engineers to do what they love (coding), a less obvious but crucial role emerges. As a leader, your primary responsibility could be to prevent your team from engaging in unnecessary or potentially detrimental tasks, a concept known as "overengineering."

In this article, I will explore the critical role of a technical lead in steering a team away from overengineering and ensuring that their efforts align effectively with the startup's goals and resources.

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Rating 0
Comments 1

Handling multidisciplinary project development

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 4 min
Views 701

Multidisciplinary project emerges when multiple teams with different expertise areas join to create a product. Despite the fact the product development is not something happining merely my a wish, product leads often perceive it as an easy walk. Usually this easy walk becomes a crash course. Let's uncover what leads to crash and what is necessary to succeed.

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Rating 0
Comments 2

ABBYY: Mobile Technologies – Retrospectives

Reading time 3 min
Views 404

- Continuous Improvement is also a Project, a meta-Project, a maintenance that usually lasts longer than the main development project.

- If you can fit into the Sprint boundaries with your development cycle, then the concept of Retrospective as it is formulated in SCRUM may also suit you. But if you are bigger and not oriented on CI/CD, then be ready to make a hybrid of SCRUM with classical Project Management – thanks God SCRUM is good embeddable (proven by SAFe) !

- What is left out in when we run retrospectives quarterly? – Plan and Check. The placeholder of classical SCRUM Retrospective is quite suitable for that purpose, surrounded, of course, by some additional groomings, providing required action plans and decompositions up to sprint-length steps.

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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0 +1
Comments 1

ABBYY: Mobile Technologies – SCRUM Planning in Detail

Reading time 6 min
Views 524

I am a Project Manager. 14 years of project management, 5 years in agile framework, last 4 years in product companies, last 3 years in ABBYY, mobile technologies. I would like to share my practical experience, how we have organized the planning in ABYY Mobile Technologies having SCRUM development.

“SCRUM — you get too little, and you need to add the missing.” The story about how we adjusted the Planning procedure for yearly roadmapping and budgeting, how we have organized the SCRUM‑planning for the feature‑driven development with product development cycle 2–3 months and more.

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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0 +1
Comments 2

In simple terms about a simple Nginx Unit

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 8 min
Views 1.4K

This article describes the new Nginx Unit web server. In it you can learn more about the web server itself, its installation and configuration: how to use listeners, routing, how to install TLS certificates. The article will show how easy it is to work with it and that huge configs are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

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Rating 0
Comments 1

iOS Dev Skills. Performance Review

Reading time 2 min
Views 840

CTO: Balancing Leadership and Architecture.

As a CTO, effective leadership goes beyond technical architecture. Conducting regular performance reviews is a crucial part of managing teams.

Note: The performance review schedule may vary depending on the specific
company's policies and guidelines.

For early-stage startups, lacking CTO expertise in conducting performance reviews is common. In my experience, I've tailored grades to encompass all aspects of professional iOS development, keeping project-specific needs in mind. Being the first in the team can offer significant growth opportunities. However, acknowledging any lack of people management skills and compensating through continuous growth is essential.

I've compiled my insights on structuring the iOS development department, conducting performance reviews, and most importantly, emphasizing the significant distinctions between developers' levels based on well-defined criteria.

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Comments 0

TRIZ: The Problem-Solving Methodology for Product Managers

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 11 min
Views 2.1K

Background

As a product manager with over a decade of experience, I'm always looking for new ways to enhance my skills and help other product managers advance in their careers. One area that many companies focus on during the job interview process is analytical and creative problem-solving. And as product managers, we encounter these types of challenges on a daily basis. It's important to stay sharp and continuously develop our problem-solving abilities. That's why I made it a habit to practice a logic puzzle every day. But I also wondered if there was a common approach to solving these puzzles. That's when I discovered TRIZ – the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. In this article, I'll provide an overview of what TRIZ is and how it can be applied in product management. Then, I'll apply TRIZ principles to solve a series of logical puzzles, showcasing the power and effectiveness of this methodology. So whether you're an experienced product manager looking to enhance your skills or someone who enjoys a good brain teaser, read on to discover the power of TRIZ!

If you find TRIZ to be a useful tool for problem-solving and innovation, there are many resources available to help you delve deeper into the methodology. The TRIZ Journal, for example, offers enough information on TRIZ, including case studies, articles, and other resources. You can also find books and online courses that provide a more in-depth look at TRIZ and how it can be applied in different industries and contexts. So if you're interested in learning more, there are plenty of opportunities to expand your knowledge and apply TRIZ to your work.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0 +2
Comments 13

How PVS-Studio prevents rash code changes, example N4

Reading time 2 min
Views 1.1K

Blender, PVS-Studio, std::clamp
If you regularly use a static code analyzer, you can save time on guessing why the new code doesn't work as planned. Let's look at another interesting error — the function broke during refactoring, and no one noticed that. No one — except for PVS-Studio that can automatically scan the project and email the report to us.

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Total votes 2: ↑1 and ↓1 0
Comments 0

IT risk management

Reading time 13 min
Views 2.1K

When you have an IT, which supports all aspects of your organization automated performance and you have a firm confidence that IT executes well, there is always a chance that something could go wrong in technology or in related IT processes. Depending on complexity of IT environment varieties of risks scenarios could arise. This article as a summary of different faithworthy sources aims to help you in getting high level understanding on what could go wrong and how you can predict it in a more conscious way.

My name is Maxim Tornov and I have been working in various IT areas for a long period of time. Since then, for over 14 years I am working in the area of IT/IS risk management with focus on in IT/IS audits, internal control implementation and assessment.

I am sure that at the present the topic of Information Technologies risk management became more vital. Organization’s efficiency in IT risk management directly affects the achievement of various organization’s goals, goals which have dependency on IT, those goals may include reliability and efficiency of business processes, the organization's compliance with regulatory requirements, the integrity of financial reporting, and many others.

I sincerely hope that this material will be useful to you and may give you some new ideas that you can contribute to the benefit of your personal development and the development of your organization's risk management culture.

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Total votes 2: ↑2 and ↓0 +2
Comments 0

How PVS-Studio prevents rash code changes, example N2

Reading time 2 min
Views 570

Blender bug, PVS-Studio
When developers do make mistakes, it's often accidental or because the developers are in a hurry. These errors often make their way into small edits to the code. Let's review one of these cases: a developer fixes an error and introduces a new one simultaneously.

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Total votes 4: ↑2 and ↓2 0
Comments 0

How to choose a static analysis tool

Reading time 8 min
Views 2.2K

Tools to improve and control code quality can be a key success factor in a complex software project implementation. Static analyzers belong to such tools. Nowadays, you can find various static analyzers: from free open-source to cross-functional commercial solutions. On the one hand, it's great – you can choose from many options. On the other hand – you have to perform advanced research to find the right tool for your team.

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Total votes 4: ↑2 and ↓2 0
Comments 0

PVS-Studio team's kanban board. Part 2: YouTrack

Reading time 28 min
Views 1.2K

Hello everyone! Welcome to the second part of the PVS-Studio Team's Kanban Board story. This time we'll talk about YouTrack. You'll learn why we chose and implemented this task tracker and what challenges we encountered. We don't want to advertise or criticize YouTrack. Nevertheless, our team thinks JetBrains has done (and keeps doing) a great job.


0853_Kanban_YouTrack/image1.png

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Total votes 4: ↑3 and ↓1 +2
Comments 0

Guide to naming in code

Reading time 15 min
Views 7.9K

We present a guide to name entities in code based on putting naming in perspectives of semantic space, design, and readability. 

The main idea is that naming should not be considered as creation of tags, but as a fundamental part of design process, which implies integral and consistent vocabulary to be used. We discuss naming process and naming formalism from these perspectives and we provide guidelines for practical use.

The work is based on 15 years of experience in engineering work, coding and development management in high-tech industries.

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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
Comments 0

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