Article Source | Program Vision
Author| An Xiaohui, graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University, has more than 10 years of IT and Internet experience. He used to be a technical partner of a start-up company, and now he is a software development technical expert and career planner.
After working for three to five years, most people can master the knowledge, experience and skills necessary for their positions. However, many people will always stay at this level, trapped in the same place, conflicting left and right, unable to get a raise or promotion.
The reason behind this phenomenon is that they do not understand the logic of personal career promotion and cannot formulate effective development strategies. Therefore, today we are going to learn a model - the workplace growth pyramid, to see how to improve the ability to achieve a leap.
Career Growth Pyramid
From this picture, we can see that personal growth and cultivation in the workplace can be divided into 6 levels.
The first level is personal professional ability. Most of us are cultivating this level of ability when we first enter the enterprise, such as programming, making PPT, using Excel, filing taxes, etc. Generally work for about 3 years, and the accumulation of professional ability is enough to be competent for the bottom-level executive work. Those who grow fast may be able to complete this stage of cultivation in 1-2 years.
The second layer is the cultivation of interpersonal communication skills. You must deliberately work hard on interpersonal communication, improve your interpersonal sensitivity, be able to gain insight into other people's thoughts, emotions, and feelings, and better understand others, especially your boss. Only in this way can you be better Cooperate with others better and become an employee with both professional ability and interpersonal cooperation effectiveness. When practicing at this level, you must consciously improve your height, look at the problem from the overall perspective of the project, have project management capabilities, be able to split and assign tasks, and prepare for promotion to junior managers in the future. It usually takes about 5 years to complete this layer. Friends who run fast can finish the journey in 3-4 years.
Layer 3 is the ability to form a team. We are required to have management, planning, organization, coordination, goal management, motivation, feedback, coaching, recruitment, performance evaluation and other abilities in order to lead others to achieve team goals. Professionals at this level can quickly form a new team or take over an existing team, can lead teams and projects well, have the ability to explain work goals differently from person to person, and can use team goals to integrate team members to achieve goals together . To complete this level of practice, the work experience is about 6-8 years, and the fast ones, 4-5 years.
The fourth level is cross-functional collaboration ability. After reaching this level, one should have the ability to work multi-threadedly, be able to lead several junior managers, manage multiple teams and projects, and be able to communicate across functions, such as being able to coordinate well. Administration, personnel, marketing, R&D, sales, product and other teams work together. It takes about 8-10 years for the average person to complete this level of cultivation. In other words, if you work for about 10 years and develop well, you may become a middle manager of a company.
The fifth level is the organizational development ability. People who have cultivated to this level understand how the various functions of the enterprise work, and can support the expansion of the company. Which department should add people, which department should reduce people, and whether to establish branches , should be aware of it. The title at this time is often the department director. It will take 9-12 years to reach this level.
The sixth layer is strategic vision. At this time, the individual is often the CEO, responsible for the company's future development, judging future trends, planning strategic direction, improving organizational efficiency, talent strategy, and product strategy.
Technology Management Knowledge Tree
For developers, the first level corresponds to the specific software development role. If you are stuck at this level and cannot be promoted, it means that you cannot become a technical management role. The most important reason for this is that most developers only focus on the cultivation of professional skills, ignoring skills such as interpersonal communication and project management.
In fact, technical management positions require a professional knowledge system of software development, project management, department operations, interpersonal communication, product knowledge, self-improvement, company knowledge, industry knowledge, etc. What this position requires is a knowledge tree :
In this knowledge tree, there is a knowledge system that is particularly important, that is - project management. If a developer does not have the project management knowledge system and practical ability, it will be difficult to lead the software project well, it will be difficult to get into a technical management position, and it will be difficult to do a good job in technical management.
So, today we will talk about the 6 stages of project management ability training:
1. Learning project management knowledge system
2. Use projects in your life as exercises
3. Observe software projects and deduce the process of project management
4. Take the initiative to do chores and be familiar with certain project management processes
5. Take small projects independently
6. Bring big projects
Learning the Project Management Body of Knowledge
Many things have rules and frameworks, and so does project management. The well-known project management system is the system defined by PMP certification. It is recommended that friends who want to take the technical management route should learn PMBOK and take a PMP certification.
In PMBOKv6, project management is divided into 10 processes:
1. Integrated management
2. Scope management
3. Progress management
4. Cost management
5. Quality management
6. Risk management
7. Purchasing management
8. Human resource management
9. Communication management
10. Stakeholder Management
The first 7 processes are the management of affairs, and the last 3 processes are the management of people. Moreover, the latter 3 processes tend to largely affect the former 7 processes. Therefore, interpersonal communication skills and collaborative management skills are all necessary skills for technical management positions.
The very beginning of our mastery of a skill is to find the knowledge system and framework in this field to learn. After understanding the basic framework, go to practice, and use practice to confirm the knowledge system learned and promote each other. In this way, knowledge can be internalized into ability.
Use real-life projects as exercises
In fact, project management is not something unique to the software development process. It is a general skill that can be applied to any type of project, such as TV production, automobile manufacturing, and annual meetings. So at the beginning, we were ordinary developers, and when we had no chance to manage projects, we could practice through projects in our lives.
For example, traveling during the National Day holiday is a good practice project, because it involves many people, cost, route planning, accommodation, transportation, food, etc. It is relatively complicated and almost includes 10 processes of project management. Another example is class reunions, reading sharing sessions, group climbing, etc., which are all good hands-on projects.
The abilities we have developed in life projects, such as planning, schedule management, and cost control, can be directly used in software projects.
Observe software projects and deduce project management process
When we are not project managers or technical managers, we can observe how others do it, put ourselves in a management role, and deduce what we will do. This is also an effective exercise.
A simple and effective practice method is to set a goal for yourself: pick out a project management-related problem every day to figure out the solution.
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For example, if the code management tool uses svn instead of git, there will be problems;
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For example, at the daily stand-up meeting, some programmers said every day, "I changed the bug yesterday, but I haven't found out the reason, so I will continue to fix the bug today." Is it meaningful?
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For example, the developer chooses to ignore the app’s video startup animation due to technical implementation reasons. If the demand disagrees, how should I communicate with her;
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For example, Yuan Xiaoer, a front-end developer, often assigns bugs directly to Datou Yuan, a back-end developer.
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For example, there are several programmers who do not write any logs when submitting code;
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For example, eight out of ten times Ah San submits code without doing integration build tests;
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For example, the boss always skips the project manager and directly directs the team's developers to add new requirements;
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……
Learning with questions is the most effective way.
Take the initiative to do chores and be familiar with the project management process
Practicing in life, substituting roles in work, and daily deduction, these methods can make us familiar with the knowledge, skills and process of project management, but the effective way is to directly do project management work in the target field.
Some people say that I am not a project manager, how do I do project management? Don't worry, although you are not a project manager, but you are in the project and take on a certain role, then naturally some work is related to you. In addition, the more critical thing is: you have to jump out of the scope of job content and job responsibilities, and think in a broad perspective. Stand up and you have a chance. If you always want to wait for the leader to see you and give you a chance, it is impossible to have a chance.
Therefore, you have to observe carefully, discover opportunities, and take the initiative to do it. For example, improve yourself, think about the entire project from a global perspective, and analyze which link is not doing well from project establishment, requirements, development, testing, delivery, operation and maintenance, and project production tools. After which link is improved, the effect can be seen, and take the initiative to do it These things, take the initiative to become a bridge connecting different links, different personnel, and different departments;
For example, observe project managers and R&D managers to see what project management-related things they are unwilling to do, such as organizing meetings, tracking plans, assigning tasks, promoting multi-stakeholder collaboration, etc., and actively ask them to express that you can share this part of the work The willingness to get the opportunity to do odd jobs.
If you have a heart, you can find a lot of opportunities to play - because most developers are too troublesome and don't want to take things on themselves.
Independent with small projects
If we make some highlights in the fourth stage, such as well-organized meetings and well-tracked project plans, then when the team has a new project, the manager may arrange for you to manage it. At this point, you're ready for systematic project management.
When you bring a small project independently, pay attention to the following points:
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Fully understand the project background, needs, goals, delivery requirements, time requirements, stakeholders, etc.
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Fully understand the situation of the R&D team members, who has what personality, behavior style, what technology they are good at, and what project experience they have. This is especially important, because the management of most software projects is not the whole process, but focuses on the software development life cycle (product definition, requirements analysis, development, testing, etc.), at this stage, R&D team members are very critical.
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Fully understand the development process and tools that the team has used, such as iteration, lean, SCRUM, Kanban, Redmine, JIRA, etc., and choose the one that everyone is familiar with.
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Do not fully introduce new methods, new processes, and new tools in the project management process, and try to make gradual reforms on the existing basis.
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Establish effective feedback channels (meetings, weekly reports, specific project members who trust you, etc.), and be able to understand the effects of project management in a timely manner. Many people start a project and just push the methods and tools without knowing the actual effect. They often misread the scriptures and don't know.
bring big project
After the practice of several small projects in the fifth stage, we should have a wealth of knowledge accumulation and practical experience in software project management, and we can challenge relatively large projects.
A small project that can be completed by 5 people in 2 months is not the same concept as a medium-to-large project that can be completed by 100 people in 2 years. The requirements for project management capabilities are very different.
Review & Preview
Today, I briefly introduced the 6 stages of project management ability training, and provided you with a step-by-step reference. In fact, software project management has its own characteristics, which are quite different from construction, production, entertainment, etc. Therefore, to do a good job in software project management, in addition to the system built by PMBOK, you also need to understand the unique knowledge system of software engineering In this regard, I recommend reading the following books:
"Mythical Man Moon"
"Software Engineering"
"Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach"
"Project Variations: In-depth Understanding of Software Project Behavior Models"
Soft Skills: A Survival Guide Beyond Code
face to face public class
In order to help everyone understand the best practices in requirements development and management more thoroughly, we specially invited David Wang, the translator of "Soft Skills - A Guide to Survival Beyond Code", to give a lecture in Chengdu on July 26-27 . Share the course "Effective Needs Analysis Training Camp" , click here to communicate with the teacher face to face.
Lecturer profile
David Wang
Former Huawei project manager, internal coach
Mr. Wang has 15 years of experience in software R&D, project management and quality management. He has successively worked for Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., IBM Solution and Services Co., China Mobile Wireless Data Wholly-owned consulting company) and many other enterprises, served as project manager, quality director, consultant and other positions. His profound theoretical knowledge, rich consulting experience, and sharp yet friendly consulting style have won him numerous awards in the industry in recent years.
value harvest
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Analyze the misunderstandings of companies in the industry in the process of demand management and demand development, and share successful experiences;
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From a new perspective of "project delivery value", understand the process of requirements development and requirements analysis, as well as the characteristics of the use of various technologies and methodologies in this process;
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Understand the main methods when capturing requirements: user stories, business concept analysis, minimal prototype method;
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Understand the mainstream methods of requirement analysis/requirement modeling: User Story user story, UseCase user use case, data flow diagram, finite state set diagram, entity/relationship diagram...;
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Understand non-functional categories, examples, and how to obtain them;
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Precautions and template examples for mastering standardized requirements;
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Understand the three commonly used methods in requirements review: formal inspection, peer expert review and walkthrough;
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Understand the process, elements and attention of requirements change control.
Training object
Project managers and project management (PMO) personnel, requirements analysts, senior developers and designers, senior test engineers
Course Outline
Software requirements analysis is the beginning of a project and the most important key point of project implementation. For the success of a project, software requirements analysis is the most critical step, so if you want to become a technical manager, you might as well learn the above experience and sign up for this open course to help you develop a more systematic way of thinking.