Programmers are expensive employees to hire and employ. They make better-than-average salaries compared to other office workers with similar experience and education levels. Needless to say, with the cost of developer time being what it is, it makes sense to take steps to improve the efficiency and productivity of your development staff. Here are 10 tips to help you do just that.
1. Minimise distractions
Most managers are aware that programming is a job that requires long periods of intense concentration. What they don't realise is they are not doing a very good job at letting their team focus on their work.
Distractions can take all sorts of forms: instant messaging, emails, requests for status reports, goofing off… the list is endless. What can a manager do?
One thing that can help is to change the way you communicate; start using face-to-face and phone conversations for time-critical items, and ask that your team keep email and IM closed for much of the day. If possible, locate your team members in private offices so that the things happening around them do not distract them. And try to not request too many status reports.
2. Maximise working time
There are eight hours in a work day, and it's up to you to get the most out of your team over the course of those eight hours.
Many managers think that the key to higher productivity is to work more than eight hours. In reality, you will see that much of an eight-hour work day is wasted time. Meetings, for example, require not just the time for the meeting, but the time preparing for the meeting, getting to and from the meeting, arriving early to the meeting, and so on. A meeting that is scheduled for 30 minutes can easily consume 60 minutes' worth of time.
Talk to your team and find out where they are losing time, and try to eliminate those wasted hours wherever possible. Your team would rather work to be more effective in eight hours than learn to love 10-hour days.
3. Encourage physical and mental health
Sound physical and mental health is essential to effective workers. Put simply, it is impossible to be of much use at the job when you are stressed out. And poor physical health makes it harder to stay alert and comfortable in an office environment.
You can't force the people on your team to go to the gym or to start handling stress well. But you can take steps to encourage healthy lifestyles. For example, request that the vending machines be stocked with some healthy alternatives to the usual fizzy drinks and caffeine. And look for signs of stress or burnout within your team and find a way to help alleviate it.
4. Stop hammering nails with a screwdriver
There is something about the world of software development that leads many managers to think all the tools are free. Maybe it's the abundance of some really good open-source and freeware tools out there.
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However, insisting that they make do with whatever they can find for free online will kill the efficiency of your team.
If they need the full version of a tool, buy it. Many of the tools that can help your team are not open source or freeware, for better or for worse. There are few tools on the market that cost more than a week's salary for a programmer, but there are many times when using the wrong tools or no tools wastes much more than a week. That means that you will need to occasionally purchase software for them to help them do their jobs.
Get used to it, and try to make the process as easy as possible. It also means that instead of your team members trying to trick evaluation copies of software into functioning beyond the time period, they can get to work.
5. Stick to programming
A few years ago, I needed to book a flight to attend a training session. I spent about 10 minutes searching and found a flight at a price that seemed reasonable. My boss didn't like the price and told me to find a better one. I spent the next day-and-a-half looking for flights. I ended up saving $50 compared to the original flight I found.
Losing 12 hours of billable hours alone was more than the cost of the flight. The moral of the story? Let your programmers program. Anything outside...
