Managing The Devs

Managing Engineers sounds like a walk in the park till you realize it's not as easy as you imagined.

Whether in an official work setting or in a bootcamp, Frontend and Backend developers could be complicated to manage, but hey! That's why we're learning how to manage them, innit?

After what our team have been through this week, it's safe to say we can add the following skills to our resume; Written and verbal communication, working under pressure, management, active listening, among others.

Let me break down what went down;

DAY ONE - April 24th, 2023

The week started with the bootcamp admin releasing the task for the week, as usual. Our task read:

Manage the engineering team to deliver a Music App by Saturday. Document the process, lessons, retrospectives, and challenges.

This task was for all Product management team but due to the limited number of engineering team, the Product management to Engineering ratio was 4:1, meaning four PM team had to work with one Engr team. In our case, we had to pair with Product Management teams 2, 3 and 4.

In approximately three hours after the task was released, a Team Lead in one of the other PM groups had created a channel for only PM team leads. Assistant team leads were added later and a vote for the time for our first meeting for the task held and 12pm was fixed for the meeting.

During the meeting, the task was discussed and it was decided by majority that some of the features of the product that had been designed, be prioritised. Then, our Team Lead was tasked with onboarding other teammates to Jira. Thereafter, these team leads began to discuss the User stories and acceptance criterias for each feature of the App that the Engr team was supposed to work on.

Another meeting was scheduled for 8pm that evening involving all the Product management teammates for the four groups. During this meeting, the team leads started discussing the prioritised features and onboarding members of all the teams involved, on Jira. Unsurprisingly, members of our team were shocked at everything happening and took it out on the Team lead. He was "called out" on our WhatsApp group chat and slack channel by members of the team because prior to this day, we had discussed our team lead's almost poor communication habit and he had agreed to "carry everyone along", so when he didn't, they acted out.

It didn't end in the group chat, at the virtual meeting, the other PM Leads were asked why they made a decision on what features were to be prioritised without including every member of the teams involved in the task, they explained that they choose the features from what was on the product design of the App that the Engineers were to work on. They admitted that they should have included the entire team. They proceeded to assign a single member of each PM group to work on 3 features—create user stories and acceptance criterias—out of the 12 features that were prioritised, so that every group would have something to work on.

Our team was assigned to work on the login feature, sign in/up feature and the homepage features.

DAY TWO - April 25th, 2023

The unresolved grievance from the previous day continued. The Team lead apologized for the poor communication and asked the team to decide when we would have a scheduled meeting before the daily standoff to discuss our grievance and come to a resolution. The time agreed upon was 7pm.

At the team's "peaceful resolution", everyone who wanted to speak, spoke to their heart's content, and after this meeting, everyone was included in the task, as opposed to only the Leads working on the task. Each teammate was assigned to a feature and asked to "follow up" the dev team to ensure that the feature was completed in time—which was essentially our task.

The resolution ended on a positive note.

During the standoff, the frontend team lead spoke about the same "communication" issue and they went on to assure the PMs that they would deliver some features the next day. The features were; Login and sign up features.

The Backend Team Lead attended the meeting late and assured the team that they would start working on their bit immediately the Frontend send in what was required.

At this point, everyone felt pumped and ready to deliver the task.

DAY THREE - April 26th, 2023

At the daily sprint, the frontend team informed the PMs of their confusion on the User Stories. According to them, some of the features prioritized are not supposed to be prioritised because of how long the programming for those features would take, and how short the time to deliver the task was. The backend team was absent for this sprint. The PM explained that they prioritised those features due to what was already on the Figma page (the design of the App they were supposed to build).

DAY FOUR - April 27th, 2023

The daily standoff started with addressing the absence of the Backend team. The Frontend Team lead explained that they want to use React for the coding because the application has a lot of pages. The Backend Team lead explained that they planned to connect Spotify API to the music app to enable users connect to the music.

The Backend Team lead shared his screen and showed us the two features that they had worked on; Signup and Login features. He showed us how they collected information into the database and the PMs were satisfied with the explanation. However, when asked when they would work on other features, the Engineers started complaining about the miscommunication between the Frontend and Backend teams and how there was a failure to follow "due process". The Product management tried to understand where their issue was coming from and figure out how to resolve it. We noticed the errors on the Signup page and the Login page and they agreed to fix it in time.

On the issue of using Jira, the PMs explained how they arrived at the criteria for each feature on the Backlog they created.

DAY FIVE - April 28th, 2023

Product managers were supposed to have their second task today but it was rescheduled to tomorrow.

At the daily standoff, the Backend team reported on the completion of the API (Spotify) that they were able to integrate into the application, but the app currently works with anyone that has a Spotify account using the person's Spotify playlist. But for now, the music cannot be played. The frontend team explained the programming language that they were using for the task, React.

We were informed that the Engineers had been given an extension in the task delivery.

DAY SIX - April 29th, 2023

Our task review was scheduled for 7pm.

We scored 90% on our previous task because we didn't create PRD and Logo for our features. According to our instructor, the Product Manager MUST always have their PRD whenever they work on product features, whether other product teams are included in the product development stage or not.

DAY SEVEN - April 30th, 2023

Today marked the final day of the submission, however we were still experiencing a blocker from the Engineers.

According to the report from the Frontend Team Lead, they were able to get the music app to play music, but they have not linked the login page, sign up pages, and landing page with the main body of the App. The main issue is; the Frontend team used React as their programming language and the Backend team used PHP for their backend logic, linking both was an obstacle that they faced, which is why they still haven't been able to finish the task till today. They are in fact, STILL working on the body of the App, here's a link to the final hosting page:

muzira-music-app.vercel.app

Here's a link to screenshots of our project:

drive.google.com/drive/folders/1D6pYFsd5-2s..

Written by: Chosen Royalty Olukanwi

Article contributor: Taiwo Olorunsola

Contributors to the task include: Chosen Royalty Olukanwi, Eden Okerezi, Taiwo Olorunsola, Olajumoke Olajide, Agudosi Oluchi, Collins Akpaka, Aishat Subair, and Christian Linus