Before I started this web site, a colleague of mine asked me to write a guest article on her site. Rebecca Heidgerd started www.makegreatwebsites.com to talk about how people should be designing web sites from a online marketer/project manager point of view. An excellent project manager in her own right, she talks a lot of best practices when it comes to visual layout, usability, SEO, etc.
Since we have experience working together in a project manager/lead developer standpoint, I decided to write a couple of articles talking about what makes a good working relationship between those two job types. With today’s fast-paced, agile development patterns and iterative builds, the last thing you need is for the tech side to be butting heads with the business side. Your projects aren’t going to run well without everyone on the same page so with that in mind, I talk about project planning and where developers fit into the process in the first article and the second article gives suggestions on how to keep the project running smoothly during the development stage.
As developers it’s important for us to remember that there is a social side to our work. It’s not just talking with machines all day but interacting with business users and understanding their needs. After all, business users are our “clients” the majority of the time and it’s important that developers treat the relationship as such. Planning and communication are the cornerstones of project management and following steps lined out in those articles will help everyone involved in a project remain united throughout the project’s lifecycle.