3 Ways to Improve the Productivity of Your Development Team
It’s the bane of every company’s development team: how to stay productive? The world of software development has always been full of constant changes and moving deadlines. Whether it’s aggressive customers or simply trying to stay focused on the current project, productivity is always a critical issue. That’s why keeping your team working at its best should always be your top priority. Fortunately, the following are three ways to improve the productivity of your development team. Keep reading for more information on how you can get the best results.
Set Clear Goals and Expectations
First and foremost, a development team should know exactly what is to be expected of their team. While this sounds simple enough, miscommunication does happen in the workspace, often leading to unproductive results.
One way to set clear goals and expectations is to create software teams with ten members or fewer. With these smaller teams, goals are broken down into what are referred to as sprints or shorter time units. Sprints are usually around two weeks and never more than four weeks. Known as Scrum Training, the idea is the main principle behind Agile Methodology Training, which we’ll get into a little bit.
During a sprint, team members monitor their progress in what is known as a daily scrum. During these meetings, strategies can be adjusted to help team members meet their goals and expectations. This strategy’s benefits are simple communication of expectations within reasonable amounts of time, with room to make changes when necessary.
As mentioned, Scrum Training is part of what is known as Agile Training, which incorporates a mindset of change and evolution in development teams. Whether it’s adapting methods of communicating goals or changing how teams are compromised, the idea of evolution for achieving the best results is always present.
Eliminate Waste and Inefficiency
Another method to improving the productivity of your development team is eliminating waste and inefficiency. Known as Kanban Training, the idea is part of a lean Agile framework. Waste can be defined as any feature or step in the development process that does not provide value to the customer. There are many types of waste, though there are seven that have been identified in software development. These are:
1. Incomplete work
2. Unnecessary extra features
3. Learning the same thing over again
4. Passing work on after it has been completed
5. Delays in delivering the product
6. Switching tasks
7. Defects in the product
Much can be written about the seven types of waste, but the main idea is to improve the workflow without losing productivity. With Kaban training, all team members are kept in the loop regarding the development team’s progress through a Kanban board’s visual aid. To maintain productivity, self-organization is a must. This means that a manager will introduce a problem and then let the team come up with solutions. When targeting the seven wastes in software development, using Kanban principles is a great way to avoid having a manager simply give orders to a team.
Provide Agile Role Models and Leaders
One final area to consider when improving a team’s productivity is to provide what is known as Agile Coach Training. An Agile Coach is critical to ensuring a team’s productivity while feeling empowered to embrace change in the workforce. While the idea of leaders in the workspace isn’t new, the idea behind an Agile Coach is providing a specifically trained leader who can mentor and teach development teams to help them achieve optimal productivity.
Agile Coaches embrace the Agile values of evolution and change. One of their biggest goals is to reduce the need to be dependent on the client. By promoting the development team’s capabilities, they ensure every team member is empowered to do their very best.
An Agile Mindset
While there are many ways to improve your development team’s productivity, these are three that embrace the Agile idea of evolution and change. At its core, the principles behind it strengthen your teams’ results while maintaining the mindset of constantly tweaking ideas to see what works best. By incorporating these methods, you should expect to see improved productivity in your development team.