Managing developers is like herding cats. Developers are skittish, fickle and smart enough to be dangerous. Every programmer thinks that he is the next Bill Gates which is ultimately not too far out of the realm of possibility.
With this in mind how does one manage programmers through a restructuring or other major shift in development? The answer is non-obvious to those who have never done this before but surprisingly simple...
1) Always start with building trust. This means that you have to know what you're doing. It also means that you need to invest serious time in the project.
2) Don't buzz-word drop. Everyone hears something different when people drop buzzwords and almost inevitably it will lead to preconceptions of what is being discussed. And this includes talking in broad generalities.
3) Keep discussions/meetings to the point and don't let them wander off topic.
4) Use fist-of-five decision making or use a proper Decision Analysis process with requirements and a ranking cube.
5) Be smart go-Agile. It's a foregone conclusion that old methods do not work. Agile systems represent 80% of the successful software development projects.
6) Put project management where it belongs... with a group representing each discipline within the division. Let them chose their own team to lead the project.
7) Stay out of project management... act as oversight, don't meddle
8) Drive discipline-specific pride by finding creative ways to encourage BA, QA, Dev, PM teams to take pride in what they do and build personal skill and presige.
9) Keep the team together whenever possible. Lay-offs and firings are almost always counter-productive.
10) Reward, Reward, Reward and go back to step #1.
So if you are doing a major revamp of how your company does things... give these ideas a try.
~DC
