My new team is the result of 3 teams merged into 1. I'm currently focused less on writing code and more on building up team processes and knowledge: Find gaps in our current processes Find gaps that are missing processes Document as much knowledge as possible (little exist unfortunately) Cross train my team members on their weaknesses Ensure specs from business are complete enough for developers to quote Architect/design technical specifications to help team develop Code review and promote discussion on development approaches There are more I can list, but those are my biggest challenges and take up a lot of my time.

Learning to estimate for my team was an initial challenge for me expanding into a management role as well. I was the most experienced member and would estimate for my speed, but others would fail to meet those dates. I'm in agreement with Emil Moe, you need to break it down into the smallest tasks then estimate those. You will have to spend some time learning weaknesses of you team members and their individual speeds, OR you can include them in the quoting process. One team found success by sitting together for an hour twice a week to review tasks and estimate together. Business would approach the manager, the manager would begin to break it into tasks and clean up the spec for the developers, then he would have it prepared for the next team estimation session. They could quickly quote small tasks so the process was relatively fast. This method also puts more brains on the spec, it can help identify gaps or conflicts in logic that business missed. These gaps/conflicts are the worst surprises that impact my deadlines.

Hi community, I'm Matthew, currently branching my career into Product Management but I started out in and still actively develop software. My schooling is in video game and simulation development (C++ and C#.Net), but I hopped into native mobile development for iOS and Android. I'm working on some side projects and a small startup (outside of my day job), I'd love to talk to my groups and see what I can share. I'm not the best developer and consider myself an eternal student, constantly trying to learn new processes and technologies. My next steps are to review more cross platform development solutions for mobile such as Xamarin or React Native, then to potentially introduce those technologies to my teams. Web technologies are where I'm weaker, maybe I'll learn more from this community! On a personal note, my wife is Chinese and introduced me to her culture. I'm working on learning Mandarin and interested in eventually working with more globally diverse teams, I'd love to eventually release an app to the Chinese market. It may sound like a weird goal, but my team experience is mostly local. If you ever want to discuss mobile dev, China, beer, or books, please feel free to reach out!