Are you turning your business into a software product? Or is there a need for resources to help you manage your software product development? We could wish that we had all it takes to do all management activities.
But the moment we learn all of these? We’re years behind the rest. So if you want your vision to happen now and happen fast, get people who can do it for you. Hire software managers!
Development managers and project managers work with the project stakeholders. They lead teams and streamline relevant project information. With their intertwined responsibilities, it can be easy to mix them up. Thus, there may be a debate on which one to hire: development manager or project manager.
The two roles encompass management principles that guide them to execute their work. However, there are certain assumptions on a development manager’s role that are expected from a project manager and vice versa. Because of this, people tend to get confused.
It is true that choosing a development manager or project manager gives you the resource to manage your product. However, there are distinguishing roles, responsibilities, and requirements that can help us identify the need for a development manager or project manager.
Why you need a Project Manager?
The answer lies in what value project managers can offer to the project. They improve the design of the processes to maximize productivity while minimizing costs.
One value is that they can manage the constraints of a project. These constraints include scope, schedule, and budget. By managing the three items, the quality of the project is controlled.
Aside from these, project managers improve the quality of communication across all stakeholders and team members. They streamline the information and processes for transparency. With these, hiring project managers can provide more efficiency in software project development.
Why do you need Development Managers?
Development managers are in charge of the 4P’s: People, Processes, Platform/Project, and Product. With these elements at hand, your product is ensured. How? Development managers make project scoping a lot easier with their experience and knowledge in the industry.
By managing the relationships and communication in the team, they can maintain a healthy and dynamic culture in project development. Any issues or concerns are raised, processed, and resolved seamlessly.
As champions of processes, development managers ensure that any element that impacts the product is handled and delivered to the right resources. If something impacts the product negatively, they make sure to eliminate it or develop practices to accept, avoid, or transfer it.
So which one is better?
Here, the appropriate thing to ask is “Which one does my business need?” as opposed to “Development Manager vs Project Manager”. By closely studying your product, you’ll be able to identify what your business is lacking.
If you consider yourself an expert in technology and business analysis, you just need to have a project manager to help you with managing the cost, schedule, and scope of your product.
For more services leaned toward training, technology, and business modeling, hiring a development manager is the way to go. More so, if you need to build a stronger management practice for your product, you can hire both. But if you’re still not sure, we have experts that you can consult!
What is a Project Manager?
Project managers are the main authority on the processes of a project. Therefore, they take care of the tasks and how they are scheduled, prioritized, delivered, and delegated. In line with these, they lead the phases of the development from initiation to closing.
This includes planning, design, execution, monitoring, controlling, and maintenance. Additionally, they may work with other managers or stakeholders to collaborate with the conception and identification of requirements and deliverables.
Project Manager Roles and Responsibilities
There are many ways project managers can add value to a project. This makes their role very important. When you have a project manager overseeing the processes, the quality of executing the tasks improves. Here are the project manager’s roles and responsibilities.
- Maintains the direction and focus on the goals of the project
- Coordinates the communication channel between the development team and the customers/clients
- Monitors the progress of the project with respect to the schedule
- Manages the constraints that affect the quality of projects, such as scope, time, and cost
- Motivates and maximizes the capabilities of team members
- Establishes a channel for streamlining key information of the project, its metrics, and documentation
- Granulates project objectives to provide clear specifications of tasks
- Manages risks, changes, conflicts, and delivery
- Manages reports and necessary documentation
Project Manager Skills
To execute the roles and responsibilities properly, a good project manager needs to be equipped with the required skills. The following items detail the hard and soft skills a project manager must possess.
- Contract management – the knowledge of the activities required to procure and maintain contracts and legal accountability
- Entrepreneurial mindset – the ability to see the project from the client, customer, and marketing viewpoint and use it to increase the project value
- Process orientation – the knowledge of following processes and managing the applicable steps per task or scenario
- Technical knowledge – the skill to use project management tools and knowledge about the industry
- Budgeting – the ability to manage the funds and its constraints to meet the project expectations
- Scheduling – in connection to budget, this is the ability to control the project with respect to time
- Planning – the aptness to create manageable plans and develop a PDD (Project Definition Document)
- Risk management – the ability to manage actions on risks such as identification, analysis, prioritization, and elimination
What is a Development Manager?
To put it, development managers own the entire software development process. They have intertwined roles along with project managers. However, development managers are more leaning towards engineering the processes and elements necessary to deliver the product out the door.
You can expect that you have someone who controls the resources of a software development team if you hire a development manager. They are responsible for on-boarding or ending the contracts of the members of a team, enforcing project deadlines, and managing the project budget.
They may communicate with different authorities, may it be from the management, customer, and or client.
Development Manager Roles and Responsibilities
It is apparent that development managers have some responsibilities similar to project managers. However, being a development manager requires other roles.
- Helps clients develop a strong business model suited for their product
- Assembles and manages a software development team for a specific project
- Trains, coaches, and guides software developers for best development practices
- Leads on the technical aspects of the development
- Executes a software development life cycle for different projects with what best fits them
- Develops a sound architecture for the project to help guide the creation of road maps and timelines
- Establishes software development standards, processes, and structures by implementing best development practices
- Works closely with project stakeholders throughout the development to manage product development and improvements
- Studies how products can help improve the company from an entrepreneurial standpoint
- Ensures the quality of the software product
- Manages resource allocation across the development process to ensure that the product is delivered on time
- Spearheads strategic planning to identify areas of improvement and adjustments in different aspects of the project
- Evaluate projects and progress statuses
Development Manager Core Skills
Being a development manager is difficult. One has to possess skills that are not only required but also essential to execute the role with finesse and quality. Here are some defining traits a development manager should have.
- Communication – the ability to communicate information at different levels. This is in the fashion of knowing which types of information to deliver to whom.
- Interpersonal skills – this trait is important as development managers interact with people from different backgrounds and different levels of project understanding. This is mostly needed when meeting clients and users.
- Negotiation – as experts in processes, development managers understand the delivery goals. With this, they will receive the client’s needs or requirements to assess the prioritization. This takes a huge amount of skill to say ‘no’.
- Project management – with intertwined roles, development managers also have to possess project management skills to enhance processes and increase efficiency.
- Technical knowledge – the gauge of what technologies are used in development to help developers explore and execute better implementations using these technologies.
- Relevance – the humility to stay hungry for learning. They have always to keep themselves informed of the latest technologies and trends in software development.
- Business intelligence – the ability to look at a project in the eyes of a business owner and a customer. They have to know the nature of the business and study its market to provide better recommendations along the way.
Full Scale offers free consultations for entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses through technology, design, content, and Guided Development services.
We also have project managers and development managers who can help you better manage the development of your product. Additionally, our pool of expert software developers is also ready to be on board with your team through offshoring!
Still have questions? Message us to know more!
