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Leadership Role in Software Project Management 21/Oct/2010

Leadership Role in Software Project Management

Gibrail Islam
Blekinge Tekniska Hgskola, Karlskrona, Sweden Email: giis10@student.bth.se

through a written technical exam and two interviews in which

TABLE I EMPLOYMENT CRITERIA No of People Job Title Selection Criteria Able to communicate effectively with others. Critical Thinking/Reasoning Technology Mathematical Skills Team players 3+ years experience in required Programming platforms and tools. Personality Traits Ability to think abstractly, and on several levels. Arrogance level should be minimum. Energetic. Should be able to perform under pressure Should be fast learners and hard working.

Abstract A manager with leadership qualities is an asset to an organization. Proper management with motivation and understanding not only makes the projects successful but bring along some incredibly fruitful results. This essay is about some basic tasks and decisions a person has to take at a managerial level. Some management theories along with the understanding of basic human psychology, in the given scenario, are used in team building for completion of an upcoming project.

Programmers

I. INTRODUCTION

he best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and selfrestraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. Theodore Roosevelt [1] This is an essay to demonstrate an understanding of the leadership role in software projects. Solution to the proposed scenario in this paper encompasses some leadership qualities as well as the management techniques necessary for a person at a managerial level in an organization. It covers some basic tasks which almost every person has to do as a decision maker and manager in a working environment. All the activities performed here will be focused towards preparation for an upcoming project. Various task and functions are to be carried out for this preparation. This will be a team of 11 members in which there will be eight developers, two test engineers and a document writer. There is a staff consisting of three people already available for the project. There brief details are as under: - Senior Programmer 1 - Male, 37 years old, married skillful, works with passion, easy in communication. - Senior Programmer 2 - Male, 32 years old, un-married, very skillful and productive. - Test Engineer 2 - female, 24 years old, not married, not very skillful and is not able to work independently, requiring a mentor. This clearly means that rest of the people will be hired according to the requirements. II. EMPLOYMENT Since, the work has to be carried out in the team with a level of technical expertise; following is the employment criteria mentioned in TABLE1. There will be an addition of four Programmers, two Junior Programmers, a Senior Test Engineer and a Document writer in the team. They will be selected

Junior Programmers

Knowledge about the tools, expectedly, we are going to use.

Senior Test Engineer 1

Should have excellent knowledge of standard testing methods and procedures Skillful. Most needed skill is that he should be a person who sees things critically. Since his job is to crash a given system so he should be capable of doing it. Must have knowledge of software processes. Good communication skills. Knowledge of Business and technical writing.

Male, 30 to 40 years of age. Married.

Documentation writer.

Must be a person who seeks perfection in his/her work.

their technical, inter-personal and their character traits will be judged. They will be hired according to the pay-scale and policies defined by the organization. A. Employment Procedure The candidates will go through a written examination of two hours related to the job they applied for. Written examination will judge their technical and mathematical skills. There will also

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Leadership Role in Software Project Management 21/Oct/2010

be questioned related to their job description. Minimum success criteria will be 60% correct answers. Successful candidates will be interviewed for one hour by technical and HR staff in succession for judging communication skills and personal traits. B. Review of Employment Criteria Four programmers with ability of work independently, mathematical and technical skills are needed for software development. The programmer must have 3+ years experience with: - Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 6, including the use of program classes and creation of DLLs - SQL Server databases, SQL, ADO.NET - Windows 2000/NT Server and Windows XP/2000/98 - SourceSafe, Crystal Reports They will be working under supervision of senior developers. Minimum arrogance level is necessary for them as they will be under experienced Senior Programmer and also because they will be mentoring the junior programmers. Arrogant attitude of the programmers can affect the overall productivity of the project. The programmer should also possess the following traits: - Enjoy working with others in a team atmosphere. - Prefer a small-business, fast paced working environment. - Enjoy maintaining/enhancing code to meet changing customer/industry needs - Have a customer-service orientation Two junior programmers will be hired. This will help us do the cost cutting. Junior Programmers are mostly full of passion and they are energetic. There may be a risk of quality of code which can be overcome by putting programmer on developing, training the junior programmer and mentoring them along with doing code reviews so that work is up to the quality. Plus junior programmers are mostly unmarried so they can easily work long hours if really required by the project although its not recommended way to work long hours. Test engineer-1 with vast experience is needed who is very skill full, male and preferably married. A male test engineer is a better option because he may able work efficiently and independently under stress conditions. He must be extra good in communication due to the reason that he will also be mentoring the female test engineer-2. It is better that he is married because females are more prone to psychological dependencies. Any emotional attachments between the testing staff may affect the work in future, so it is better to hire a male member who is emotionally stable and technically sound. Ability of looking into things critically will be a plus point for the particular job. He must be fully aware of testing standards and methodologies. Document writer is a formal lingual presenter of the project. Strong communication and technical report writing skills are required for document writer. He/She may have detail knowledge of business processes and software project flow. Software document will be used for understandability and reusability of the project as well as communication with client. A perfection seeker in the work will add beauty to the progress of the project. C. Employee Training Two days employee training will be conducted by Manager (me) and the Senior Programmer-1. They are to be instructed about the organization, products, culture and policies. The trainees will be briefed about the Organization and the

Organizational hierarchy. Organizations traditions and values will be explained in detail. They will be informed about ongoing and past projects. They must be clear about the immediate reporting/contact persons if they have a problem or query in future depending upon the case and nature of a problem. Reasons of the training must be clarified in order to help them understand the importance of the session, so they dont consider the training as a waste of valuable time. They should be clear about everything related to the organizations internal and external environment even its competition. Trainees must be briefed about the upcoming project, communication with the

Fig. 1.Showing the Rise in Employee Performance level before, during and after the training

client (if required) and the expected schedule. Training sessions shall include a short introduction about expected tools and techniques we are going to follow for the project. There should not be any question in the mind of a trainee at the end of the training. Every thing from Organization to Competition, Ethics to Policies, Technology to Product and from Responsibilities to freedom of work must be clear in the mind of the trainees. Goal of the training is to make the trainees feel good and secure about themselves, motivate the trainees, promote the culture of learning [2] and to make them productive. Effort shall be put into training to make the training useful. A useful training is measured by the increase in productivity. More short training sessions may be conducted (if needed) after the start of the project. III. TEAM FORMATION Two programmers along with a junior developer will work in a small team. This means there will be two small teams each consisting of a two programmers and a junior developer. Senior Programmers will supervise the teams as well as do the development in the project. Senior programmer 1 will be selected to head the team of seven developers altogether. Both the small teams and the senior programmer will work with him.

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Leadership Role in Software Project Management 21/Oct/2010 for further consideration. [3]. The manager or Software Engineer-1 will act as a moderator in the team meetings. Anything that effects project scope should be communicated to client for his approval so that all stake holders are involved.

Since he is good at communications skills so I will pass the information through him being the project manager but I will keep a close liaison with all the developers myself as well. Small teams are easy to monitor and work quality can be measured very easily. The problems, if arise, are identified at very early stages. A junior programmer, working with two experience programmers, will have an opportunity to learn a lot. This can save us also the cost of training junior programmers separately. Working in small teams also increases the sense of responsibility, which brings opportunity for professional development and confidence in the employees. This work structure will create condition of being recognized which will decrease dependency in terms of work and everybody will be able to perform well. It is a waste if humans personal characteristics and qualities if they are not used for productivity in a working environment. Senior Programmer-1s communication skills will be utilized in briefings and team meetings. Senior Programmer-2s productivity will be a motivation symbol for rest of the team and they will naturally strive more. Both the test engineers will be working together which will help training the test engineer-2. Two brains working on the same thing bring new ideas and invent new methods of handling the work. Success of their job is to crash the system developed by the development team. This nature of job will produce some level of professional enmity between the testing and the development team solution to which will be addressed later in the next section. Document writer will be work will be working alone with the collaboration of all the other team members. A. Work Structure The development team will be assigned a task through Senior Programmer-1. Senior Programmer-1 and 2 will divide the task and assign the subtasks to the small teams. Completed task will be double checked by the Senior Programmer 1 and 2 and will be handed over to the testing team. In the mean while the Document writer will be continuously in contact with the Senior Programmer-1 and the testing team. Project activities will be discussed in detail in the team meetings and activity chart will be made on activity on arrow so we can keep track of all activities and contingency plans should come in terms of failure to meet deadline of the required activities. All departmental heads will be reporting directly to the project manager. B. Team Meetings Having an agenda reduces aimless 'time waster' type meetings, and sets targets to achieve during the meeting [3]. A half hour, weekly team meeting about the progress, challenges and difficulties faced in the said project, will be scheduled. Attending the team meeting shall be mandatory for all the team members. Issues, solutions and strategies will be raised and discussed in the team meeting. Brainstorming is a good tool to put the collective brain power of the team to good use. In a brainstorming session, everyone throws in any idea that comes into their mind no matter how outlandish it may sound. Proposed ideas are not debated or evaluated during the session. All ideas presented are recorded

C. Team Building and Collaboration Team meetings help fostering a collaborative culture in the organization which helps organization to achieve its objectives collectively. It increases socialization among employees. It helps in reviewing or identifying problems which otherwise can go ignore if people do not meet each other.[4]. Brain storming sessions together also helps bring teams close. A meeting together in kitchen with a cup of tea or a lunch together or a football or tennis game once in a while really helps in build the bond between team and let go the professional enmity.

IV. TEAM LEADERHIP STRATEGY A. Motivation Strategy There are many standards set by leaders and various theories given by people. Theories for motivation are taught and discussed always where ever there is discussion for leadership and management. You will always find people advocating or opposing a theory in such a discussion. I wonder why do not we think: motivate people to do what? Why do we need to motivate people? What do we want them to do? Simplest answer which will come to our mind will be Goals. We want to motivate them so that some goals can be achieved. One meaning of a goal is level of achievement. The nature of a goal may change but goal remains there. What if that there is no goal? If you just tell people to do their best, how one is going to know that what is his/her best? Everyday, there will be a different level of best for every individual. People who oppose goal directed motivation or goal setting theory do not realize that they have been motivated all life by the same theory. A runner runs the race till he reaches finish line. Even the people, who loose, know that how much far they were from reaching the goal. Students are given a goal of getting maximum marks out of a maximum limit. Just Doing his/her best may get a student 30 marks if the upper limit is not set; and the same student may get 80 marks if the upper limit or the goal is defined. Sentences like "Try hard" or "Do your best" are less result oriented and less effective. "Concentrate on beating your best time or "Try to get more than 80% correct" may be more fruitful instead. Dr Edwin Locke's was a pioneer researcher on goal setting and motivation theory. In 1968, in the article "Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives," he stated that employees were motivated by clear goals and appropriate feedback. Locke went on to say that working toward a goal provided a major source of motivation to actually reach the goal - which, in turn, improved performance.[5] B. Control Employee Motivation Identify Organizational and Employee goals and make the organizational goals look like as they match with the goals of the employees without, lowering, affecting or changing the organizational goals. This will develop interest in the work. A negative behavior is seen in the employees whose goals and interests are neglected by their organizations. Appreciation for a good work does not involve financial rewards always.

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Leadership Role in Software Project Management 21/Oct/2010 V. BUILDING TEAM SPRIRT DIRECTED TOWARDS THE TASK

Sometimes a sentence of appreciation is enough to motivate a team or an individual. If an employee is wrong or does an acceptable mistake a correction method shall be adopted which does not discourage the employee. Set realistic goals, specify them clearly and then let them do it. C. Develop Sense of Responsibility The team will be motivated by developing sense of responsibility in them. To achieve this various methods shall be adopted. Tell them what to do; Not how to do it. Although manager is responsible for the results but they will be made feel as if they are responsible for the results because it was their choice of way to do it[7]. D. Monitoring Small teams can be easily monitored by their failure or success in accomplishing a given task and Individuals with problems in productivity are easily pointed out. A part from that 360o appraisal system will be used to get the feedback of human resources. E. Be Predictive about the Behavior Foresightedness is one of the qualities of a leader which differentiates the leader from the followers. Predicting the team behavior and the individual behavior may help in making strategies for the events before the actually occur. Various methods and standards can be used for predicting the behavior[6]. - Competency sub-sets and Emotional intelligence can be used as for profiling the collective and individual needs. - Advanced interviewing techniques can be used in selection of employees in order to predict their future behaviors and development needs and those can be matched with the target profile. - Develop a Personal Development Plan according to the development needs for ongoing and future performance expectations. Future problems can be handled before hand if a leader is predictive. Further solutions for un-foreseen problems may be situational and depend upon circumstances which will be dealt accordingly. The case may differ from situation to situation and individual to individual. Interest of the organization as well as the team members must be kept in mind while searching for a solution. The employees usually own the organization which owns them. F. Conflict Resolution Not every problem is predictable. So there all the problems cannot be addressed with one set of rules. Sometimes there are problems which need virtue and wisdom to resolve them. Therefore the resolution to the problems is situational. There may be a generic set of steps which are to be followed by a manager in case of a conflict in a working environment. - Good relationships should be mangers first priority: - Problems and people should be kept separate. - Attention should be paid to the interests that are presented. - Increase understanding. - Avoid being a party to a situation.

Employee must be taught again and again that their and accomplishment worth far more than just a monetary rewards. Creativity and meeting goals must be appreciated with certificates and recognition letters. Setting team targets and rewarding them as a team may be effective in developing team spirit which drives them automatically towards goal achievement. VI. CONCLUSION A human nature cannot be controlled by a specific set of rules. There are cases and situations which can be solved by some methods based on experience and theories. One cannot strictly follow one theory in every case and every situation. Leadership and management comes with a mix of theories and character, carrots and sticks, degree of freedom to work and level of bound to do something. Specifying and limiting things can rather make the working environment difficult. Every thing and every theory has its acceptance level and I am going to work with a mix of motivational theories, adapting them according to the situation, concentrating mainly on organizational goals along with understanding of human needs and psychology ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to thank Dr. Darja mite for making us understand the importance and application of the subject. I am also grateful to idem Gencel for her guidance and never ending willingness to transfer the knowledge she has. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] http://www.inspirationalquotes4u.com/trooseveltquotes/index.html http://smallbusiness.dnb.com/human-resources/careers-job-training http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~damithch/guide3e/Ch7.html http://www.blurtit.com/q476752.html http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_87.htm http://www.leadershape.biz/selection_and_development_by_behaviour.asp x Marine Corps Values and Leadership User's Guide for Discussion Leaders.

Author Gibrail Islam:: (Born in 1982); Graduated from Pakistan in the year 2008. He has been working in different fields of software development. His major areas of interest are Security System applications.