The Essential Guide To Building Balanced Development Teams
Strong Correlation
Did you know that mentorship is a high indicator of salary? It’s an indicator that’s actually comparable to the attainment of a PhD. As a matter of fact, this is probably going to end up working better for your company or your startup.
A collegiate education is less about functionality of knowledge in the “real” world, and more about mastering said information in the “simulation” of the campus. Even work-study programs have financial and employment pressure points in different psychological regions, meaning those who come through them are still not as well-prepared as those in a good mentorship program.
Some things a good mentor can do for those that will be leading a development team include:
- Helping Define Realistic Expectations
- Facilitating Proper Documentation Procedures
- Optimizing Processes Of Development For Greater Success
- Helping Development Leads Institute Less Fragile Code Bases
Realistic Considerations
Now to define a good mentor, you’ve got to look at several factors. You can’t just look at experience; there are plenty who are experienced, but ineffective. Additionally, you can’t just look at effectiveness. Sometimes a team lead will make a lot of money very fast, but it turns out later this individual was lying to buff up the numbers. You need a combination of both experience and aptitude for greatest effect.
The difficulty is, in many technological climes, once an individual manages to transcend the engineering department, they hit management until they’ve reached a financially stable point that allows them to drop out of the game and pursue their dreams in life. It’s great for them, but terrible for their previous employer.
One way around this is to institute remote mentors and/or programmers. There are many ways to spin this: you can have a mentor on-site who works with remote programmers, or a remote mentor who works with on-site programmers—whatever best suits your operations.
Remote Solutions
If you have remote working programmers, you can actually get the same out of them as you would from an in-office employee. Using contemporary productivity resources will make your life a heck of a lot easier while traveling around the globe. This is true for the worker, and for the manager.
Cloud computing solutions help “float” in-office infrastructure. Such an operational solution has been feasible since the internet’s inception, it just hasn’t been tangible. Today standardization via cloud and other mobile computing solutions like tablets, laptops, and smartphones have provided requisite digital infrastructure.
You can cut out the costs of devices, you can cut out the costs of office space, and you can cut out the cost of employee commutes through remotely hired operatives using BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) practices to manage programs remotely.
Cloud computing allows for standardized desktop platforms so work is standardized between disparate employees. There are even other online apps which don’t require traditional crowd patronage for use.
Factors Combined For A Well-Oiled Machine
Lastly, you need to ensure both mentors and those they are working to educate have the proper tools for the job. It doesn’t matter how good a mechanic you are if you’re told to fix a totaled vehicle with a screwdriver and a dishrag. You’ll need better tools! The same is true for programmers.
These tools will serve the purpose of allowing your programmers to give their best without frustration. Automation, and tools will help them stay on top of their game at all times. For example, if you’re looking to streamline protocols surrounding IIS, visit the website for a guide that will take a look at how to use an application performance management system to simplify all of this and get more advanced IIS performance monitoring for ASP.NET applications.
Mentors can help employees find such resources and put them to good use immediately, rather than waste time pursuing ineffective development solutions.
So to recap: curtailing expenses in operations through remote innovation, utilizing mentors to their fullest ability in order to properly train employees, and giving everyone the right tools for the job represent three strategies that will very likely help your development teams function with greater effectiveness than they have before.
