“A man without a goal will get lost in life. A team without a goal will break up along the way.”




To work effectively, team members need to be on the same page and believe in the same story


October 1, 2016.

It has been one year and five months since I joined the company. I was mainly responsible for technical research and development, project management and daily management of the team. Because I chose a startup company, I had to start a lot of basic construction work from scratch. It’s going from zero to one.

At the beginning of my work, the team consisted of three Java R&D engineers and a project team, which belonged to the IT Comprehensive Department. For the team goals, I did not deliberately preach too much. As the old joke goes, “Dreams are like underwear. You have them, but you don’t have to show them to everyone you meet.” As the last member of the team, my primary task is to get familiar with the business of the company, communicate with the other two members of the team and understand their technical capabilities. Then set goals for the team’s first week.

The serial number Job content
1. Unify the project development architecture
2, Unify IDE tools and servers
3, Unified database and management tools
4, Unified code versioning tool
5, Unify project development process and requirements

In the second week, I began to quickly build the project development framework and design of common tool classes. Then the project team undertook an e-commerce project. We did the following:

Requirement analysis (outline design, detailed design) 2. Project schedule 3. Database design 4. Prototype diagram design (UI design) 5. test cases 6. coding 7. test 8. Project deployment 9. Delivery 10. Maintenance and upgradeCopy the code

Through the run-in of an e-commerce project, team members reached a consensus among each other — “do one thing together”. This is the basic and ultimate goal of the team.

The project management work of the team is actually quite easy, in fact, it is the overall management. Unified planning (forecast) — unified planning (plan) — overall arrangement (implementation) — unified operation (command) — overall consideration (control). The classic case is: boil water to make tea. Is to wash the cup first, take the kettle water, boiled water, take the tea, such as water, tea; Or take the kettle to connect water, boil water, wash the cup, take tea, wait for water to boil, make tea, this is a problem worth thinking about.

Individuals will choose the latter. What would you choose?

Two months later, due to the business needs of the company, we immediately set up the iOS project and Android project team, and finally decided to recruit two R&D engineers respectively. Then I started screening resumes, arranging interview questions, and interviewing mobile developers. Trouble, it seems, also from this time began.

“Mobile Business Division” is our private name. In fact, we all prefer this name, but for some reason we use another name. The overall team configuration is as follows:

jobs The number of
Java R&d Engineer 3
IOS R&D Engineer 3
Android R&D Engineer 2
UI designers 1
Test engineer 1
The product manager 1

Personally, such a department-level team can be regarded as a complete configuration of a small company. At this time, I began to make clear the team’s work goals and the team’s construction and development goals. With the increase in team members, I obviously felt like I had a lot more to do on my daily to-do list, so I had to work overtime at the beginning. During this period, the team’s work objectives were basically project-centered, with product requirements and test cases as two basic points to carry out work. This is probably the typical project team. The main working process of the upgraded team is as follows:

1. Sorting out project requirements; 2. Requirement review and presentation; 3. Test engineer writing test cases 6. Server engineer designing project database and coding business interface 7. Client engineer construct project to complete UI and project business according to design draft 8. Follow up project progress and provide technical solution 9. Project test 10. Deployment online, delivery and use 11. Maintenance and upgradeCopy the code

The work goal of the team is inseparable from the efforts of each member of the team. First of all, the team’s responsibility should be in-depth analysis of the actual situation of the team at this stage, and then make reasonable work objectives. Of course, this goal can be divided into short-term small goals and long-term goals. For example, we set a small goal to master a certain technology or successfully make a project case in the near future. For long-term goals, I prefer to use the analogy of “fast tactics, slow strategy”. Short-term goals can be regarded as tactics, while long-term goals can be regarded as strategies. The long term goal is to be the leader in your industry, to change people’s lives with code.

Dreams still have to have, in case it comes true. Like the lottery can not win, but must buy. What is the difference between living without dreams and salted fish?

2. Manage team members’ work objectives

The team leader should make the team members clear about their work goals and their personal work objectives; Assist team members to achieve their own goals and achieve personal value for team members.




Systems govern people and processes govern matters.


As for the work arrangement of team members, I usually arrange corresponding project development work according to individual technical ability and development efficiency.

Every Monday morning, there is a 15-20 minute weekly meeting for team members to lay out the work of the week. For important work, follow up with the task leader after the meeting to make sure team members are clear about their goals. Every day before the end of work, team members will submit the work log of the day. I will check the work content of the day and evaluate the overall progress of the project according To the To do list and the work log.

In addition to the regular Monday morning meeting, there is also a 30 minute meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon. The purpose of the meeting is for team members to report on their work for the week and to see how the rest of the team is doing. Cultivate team cohesion and care for the team.

The above are some basic procedures. In fact, the actual management work within the team is more complicated than described. Later, I came up with a sentence to sum up: “Everything is important, only priority”. I once asked an iOS engineer to write a Swift version of file cache cleanup, and the engineer’s first response was, “I can’t do that.” My heart is also drunk, because the project has entered the final stage, the work is not urgent, but the engineer’s morale (confidence) is very important, so I first encouraged the engineer, affirmed her previous work, let her believe that she can complete the work. Then with her to find information, not long before the smooth completion of the work. Later, I was afraid that I would pick up the keyboard and write code and hurt someone.

The management of team members’ work objectives can be divided into three steps:

  • Individual work plan objective management
  • Personal career development goal management
  • Psychological and mental management of team members

Every point is crucial, after all, the heroic era of one man fighting alone is gone, so we must rely on a strong team.