I’ve started with Project Management – by a mistake of chance, I guess – one and a half years ago when a former colleague invited me to work with him at the company he had joined just a few months earlier and which was rebuilding their software development team.
At that time I was finishing a software project for a casino games company, and that proposal arrived just in time to keep me out of the in-between-projects position.
The guy who invited me was leading the Software Development part of the team, which had 5 members, including me, and the fact that we had worked together before, roles inverted, made me feel quite comfortable despite of the new environment.
Unfortunately, against all my expectations, the first couple of months were really tough and even today I still wonder what was going on that guy’s mind when he started to take all the right steps to lead the team the wrong way.
For cutting a long story short: it became clear for everyone that he was having problems to deal with his newly achieved position. It seemed that he was not prepared to perform the switch, and his behavior (or misbehavior) evolved to a point where almost everyone inside and outside the team started to avoid him. This situation, of course, culminated with a formal motion over the IT manager’s desk asking for his replacement.
As the elder of my peers and being the one having a multidisciplinary software development background, I've been invited by the IT manager (who had joined the company just a few months earlier) to take the team's leadership, experimental basis, and try to get things back on track.
I knew it would be quite a challenge to take that position because the attitude of my former colleague left a really scary storm cloud over our heads, and that cloud had to be dissipated in order to give the team a chance to regain the internal clients' trust.
I can't tell what was going on my mind when I decided to accept that challenge, but that's what I did, and because of that, here I am, trying to write something about my recent experiences with Project Management.
Lessons Learned:
• When you get to a leadership position you must be prepared to delegate.
• Micromanaging is evil. Let the technical stuff to the technitians. Align expectations with your team then get out of the way and let the guys do their jobs.
• Read the attitude of your team. Their behavior is a source of feedback on which you can rely to balance or correct your leadership style.
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