Managing Software Projects

Pre-requisites:

Computer literacy. Not essentially a degree but should know all the words in a computer dictionary.
Must have 3+ years of experience in a software industry. Farther you have been from software development ,better are your chances.
Must be a good impromptu orator.
Must have read all Dilbert books and comic strips. Without them you'll run out of ideas.

Transition from developer to manager

If you are currently a developer and aspire to become a project manager , here are the guidelines you must follow :

Never have technical arguments with your boss. Instead , view his ideas with utmost sympathy and compassion, don't let him ever know that you know much more than him, that will just hurt his ego which can be deadly to your dreams since he holds the power not you.
Learn to highlight even the most trivial task as an achievement. Practice suppressing your inner-voice telling you that it was a kids job. Choose a suitable multiplication factor for the actual time-spent on your task along with a appropiate justification. If fixing a bug took 1 hr, tell it took you a day.
Try to work in Odd hours. If you are a regular employee working 40 hours a week, why work in regular hours. That won't make you differentiated, so skip regular office hours, instead work in night, weekends and don't forget to send in a lot of mails in off hours as a proof of your dedication and hardwork.
Taking Initiatives. Initiatives are of two types, taking initiatives in your own work, taking initiatives in others work. Well everyone takes initiatives in his own work, that's what everyone is paid for, isn't it? But learn to take initiatives in others work, even though you might be aware of the fact that you are not needed. If nothing else, just walk to your buddy's office and ask him what,why and how he is doing his assigned task. Then let your boss know that you helped him in certain ideas. That's what gives a person leadership!!

Working as a Manager

If you are a first time manager, it is essential that you learn to secure your seat in the arena, lest someone might steal it, same way as you stole from someone more capable than you.

Call regular team meetings. Now that you are a manager, it's not the time for you to think, instead learn to make things happen for you, utilize the resources (workers). Call a meeting for any technical issue that comes forward and let the team members do the brain storming. Once they are done, modify their agruments a bit, and make the whole proposal looks like your own.
Show your abilities in reviews. Whenever your worker comes up with a document for review, it's a fun time for you. Now is the time to prove your worth. Doesn't mean that you have to be James Bond of software, any document is always full of errors ( no-human is perfect). In the first pass, look for the following errors

Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, bad sentence formations.
Check all the references in the documents.

In the second pass look for simple software bugs.

Names of variables,classes, objects, they just might not be providing enough information
Look for bad indentation which is hampering your efforts to understand the code.
Too less of modularity or too much of modularity, anyway it is unreadable code.
No comments-bad programmer, too much comments-have to search for code, useless comments-any dumb programmer can understand the code , why comments?

Avoid making critical decisions. One can commit a mistake only if one does something. Thus avoid making decisions,someone will do the task anyway for you. If something goes wrong, you can always join the opposition and blame him.

Disclaimer: This article is a humor, any resembelence of it to any real life situation is coincidential.

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