Working With Developers

Monday, January 29, 2018

3:30PM to 5:30PM

Hawes 203

Guests:

Abby Fichtner, Hacker Chick

Ashish Datta, SetFive Consulting

Assignment

For this session, there's strictly reading and no other assignment other than finalizing the following deliverables:

Student Participation Agreement - To be sent to Tom Finan (cc: Susan Backus)
Development Budget & Contract post in Assignment Master in the appropriate tab by Feb 5 - Consider access protection for contract docs if there are any confidentiality restrictions between you and your developer.

Required Reading

Working with Developers at Startups (A Guide for Non-Techies), Abby Fichtner

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule, Paul Graham

5 Best Practices for Working with Developers, Stella Garber

How to Work with Freelance Software Developers, Greg Jorgensen (a typical programmer)

For fun: How to Work with Software Engineers, Ken Norton

Recommended Reading

If you want to delve deeper into how developers think and work, these are good choices.

BOOKS:

Frederick Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month is a timeless classic on software project management by the "father of the IBM 360" -- one of history's riskiest and most successful tech product development efforts
Paul Glen, Leading Geeks, discusses how developers think, what motivates them, and how to manage them

BLOGS:

Facebook's Julie Zhuo has written a trio of posts on how to work with product managers, designers, and engineers -- in each case, from the perspective of one of the other disciplines (Julie has worked in all three). We assigned these for an earlier session, but it's worth re-reading the post on working with engineers
Michael Woloszynowicz on how non-technical managers should give feedback to developers
Ellen Chisa: Engineers: So your PM Sucks? Here's How to Fix It

Session Prep

In next week’s session, we will talk about best practices for working with developers - from freelancers working with founders to full time engineers working with PMs at mature companies. Drawing from the readings and from past/current experiences, come to the session with questions for our guests and the instructor about your search for developers, the contract and negotiation process and about working with developers in general. We will also answer any additional questions about budgets for PM102.