My friend was frustrated, “I have no control!”
He was given the opportunity to learn management and wondered, “How do you manage something that you didn’t even build?”
My friend had a tech lead or manager spec all the work he had to do. As long as his test suites passed, he was doing his job. He would ace his promotions because of the way he was evaluated. Now he feels shaky about being responsible for a project he wasn’t writing code for.
He’s not used to the sudden change in responsibilites. He can’t cover everything. To complicate matters, the team responsible for development is remote. Now he can’t physically step in and directly check in on the engineers.
I noticed one key thing from his observation succeeding as a developer. Let’s flip this around. What made the project ultimately successful? I would say the manager did a good job speccing out the requirements for the engineers. He needs to learn how to spec projects. This was how he accomplished his objectives in the past. If he was successful this way, then this can work for his new team. Culturally I believe the engineers are used to that style of accomplishment. He will need to learn how to gather requirements. This can come from the product manager or directly the customers. Then scoping. Then laying out key objectives for the projects and timelines.
In short, he needs to learn project management.
We’ll see how things progress over time.
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