Everywhere I have worked people ask me to have my teams work harder or work smarter. What does this mean and how can you do it?
Unfortunately, we as engineers sometimes translate the orders to work harder or smarter into skipping steps. I have been guilty of it myself. You find a piece of a project that needs to be re-architected in the middle or the end of development and you can face it or pray for a miracle. We have all been there.
However, each time we ignore the correct steps, we pay for it in the end. Either we don't make the dates, burn people out and lose them or incomplete or buggy products to the field.
You should employ smart people and you should employ smart processes. Take the time to do requirements documents, specifications and code reviews. Take the time to get sign-off from all of the stakeholders. Take the time to do it again if things change.
Don't get me wrong, you should challenge your teams to get it right the first and you should challenge them to meet their commitments. You should challenge everyone to act as a team and pitch in when things go wrong. Just don't throw out the baby with the bath water. The fun part of software is coding something and seeing it work. The rest of the stuff I mentioned above is like brushing your teeth or paying taxes. Only your leadership will insure the hard parts get done.
The smartest way to work is to take the time to do good engineering. The effort you and your team will need to employ will differ from project to project and company to company. Take the time to figure out what you need and then help your teams accomplish their tasks and hold them accountable.
More later ...
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