Top 3 Management Challenges Facing Small Development Team Leaders (and how to overcome them)

“Not another one on leadership advice” might you think aloud. And would be absolutely right. I can’t stand too basic advice on being a good leader, with a machine mindset and never-ending energy.

The truth is I’d like to show my experience as a founder of a small to middle software company owner. (100 in developer count, is it small or middle?) The style of leadership and management strategies is hard to master and keep track of. So, I listed my top 3 management challenges and how I deal with them.?

Stress on Meeting Quota Goals

Business development and development team challenges are similar in the sense of quotas. Facing the issues like unrealistic goals and forced progress isn’t uncommon. And then it leads to unfulfilled plans, distractions, and unsatisfied customers.?

To overcome this, we need to give room for unexpected situations. For instance, in Agile lifecycle-based project when we do sprint planning we can’t set up the time estimates in a strict and detached manner. It’ll be more effective to add some time in case we have any issues. Prevent stress before it happens, so to say ??

One more unexpected insight: Ukrainian entrepreneurs are doing great at meeting deadlines. Management skills became our strong side because of the constantly changing environment. Honestly, didn’t expect the war to hone management skills ??

Keeping up and Choosing the Right Technologies

Far away are days when management was possible at the office and without plenty of tools. Chats for communication, Agile tools like Jira/Trello/Kanban for monitoring tasks, Google Calendar for meetings, LinkedIn for networking, and Notion for daily to-do tasks for myself and the business team. The world is going crazy right now with the AI revolution. So, we will only see more and more technologies that could either help or slow us down.?

It’s hard to choose long-lasting technologies as predictions don’t always work. Earlier, I would recommend myself to stick to popular and common tools that literally everyone chooses. Software development tools are constantly changing and I feel like only a few are going to last.?

But now I only want to concentrate on the ones that fully fit my business goals and capabilities. Old as world method is to weigh the pros and cons of technology before implementing it. I don’t think I found a better method yet.?

Also, I noticed that we are cluttering our digital workspace with every possible app to help us stay productive. And the result is that I don’t use at least 50% of them and it takes ages to find the info.?

Cleaning up time-eaters and unnecessary tools/apps, inbox regularly optimizes my work. One more that I’ll test is ChatGPT as many say it can replace many tools at once. As of yet, it could make usual tasks a few times faster. That leaves room for more important activities.?

Decreasing Employee Dedication

I do think that’s common for employees to lose motivation and involvement in companies of any size. However, in smaller ones, it’s more vital to continuously increase employee engagement. That helps scale and improve in multiple areas of the business.?

I think we lacked dedicated team members that can be promoted to leadership positions. To overcome the challenge, we defined a few practical steps.?

1. Clearer expectations to fight the general decrease in productivity.
2. Then, to stay on the same level of productivity we invested in team members that had the experience to take leadership positions.?
3. And to prevent further situations, Incora decided to regularly do reviews and provide feedback. It surely helped to foster the culture I aimed for.?

The most valuable incentive I got is to regularly and clearly communicate with the team. I aim at open communication to achieve positive work culture. Especially, if there are issues or unexpected situations (like war).

Keeping everyone informed and connected (both in-house and remote team) helps tons with employee dedication. The methods we chose are to talk regularly and create Incora news digest to show what happened in a month.?

Wrap Up?

In most small companies management plays a critical role, and you’ll often face issues like those. There are way more than 3, of course. However, scaling a small business, staying competitive, and entering new markets are typically widely discussed. For me, meeting quotas, the right technologies, and employee dedication is no less important than business growth.?

What about your experience with management challenges? Have you overcome some of them?