Tip: Negotiate Achievable Goals

As the leader, it is your job to make sure that your software team’s goals are achievable.

The goals ought to result from a negotiaton with the software team.

I have been a part of teams where the goals were dictated by upper management. This is a big mistake. Upper management is too disconnected from the software development process to know whether their desires are realistic. If this is happening in your company, don’t let it stand.

As a leader in a situation like that, it is your responsibility to make the change required.

In business, it is important that you do what you say you are going to do. Some believe that software development is somehow exempt from this business advice because it has too many unknowns, because it is too difficult to predict. So, they believe that actually achieving the goals is too much to ask of software teams.

They are wrong.

It is your job as a software leader to have the skills required to negotiate achievable goals and to know enough about the software development process to arrange to meet the goals. You need to be a great software developer to lead software teams because you need to know what is achievable and what’s not.

If your team’s goals are not achievable, then you need to make change.