Engineering Management
How to Delegate Effectively in Software Development Teams
Free up time for critical tasks and coach future leaders by strategically delegating responsibilities
Managers of growing software development teams have to deal with rapidly increasing workload. At some point, they don’t have enough time in their day to look into each issue. If they keep doing so, they become a bottleneck in decision making, slow their team down, and put its success at risk.
This behaviour is frequent among first-time managers, especially those who have been promoted to this role thanks to being strong individual contributors. They keep relying on their old strengths which no longer serve them well in the new role. What they should be doing instead, is to start delegating their leadership responsibilities to their team members as early as possible.
The advantages of effective delegation for the manager are clear: the manager gets more time to focus on critical issues, decision-making in the team gets faster, the team grows new capabilities and increases its capacity by developing future technical leads and people managers in its ranks.
That sounds great but… What responsibilities shall a manager delegate to the team? When to…
