Menu
Tomek's blog
  • Contact & About
Tomek's blog

Taking Over a Project

Posted on November 3, 2011January 4, 2016 by Tomek Kaczanowski

So I’m taking over a new project as a technical team lead. This team has been working for some time (for a long time). Now my task is to lead its further development. I’m excited and worried at the same time.

I spent some time wondering about what should I know about this new project and about the team. Here is the list of topics that I think I should gather some information about. Maybe someone else will find them useful. I also hope for someone giving me hints about things that I forgot.

I did not mention some obvious stuff like “what the project is all about”. The list is chaotic, but so am I. 🙂

Team

  • who? + characteristics + how long they work with the team + strong/weak points + maturity level / how independent they are? + maybe there is some BSC mechanism, if so, take a look at the previous records
  • language skills
  • contact – mail, skype/jabber nick etc.
  • working hours? anyone working half-time? anyone with unusual working hours?
  • where? one room or many places
  • some people from other teams involved? independent consultants? some project partners (external companies) that we cooperate with?
  • what are the roles of people
  • who knows what?
  • are team members involved in other projects?
  • questions to ask to each team member:
    • what are you proud/angry/annoyed about? what (de)motivates you?
    • please draw the architecture of the system
    • please write down the “definition of done”
    • what issues do you think we have? what is the most common source of bugs? which bugs are the most annoying for us / for clients?

Meetings / Telcos

  • internal (only the team is involved) – Scrum – daily / sprint / backlog ?
  • with clients
  • with higher-ups?
  • traveling? where? for how long?
  • how are the invitations send? who sends them? who sets the agenda? who sends minutes (if any)? who attends?
  • how long is the meeting? who participates?

Documents

  • where can I find them, how are they generated, who maintains them?
  • technical documentation
  • user documentation
  • developers documentation
  • reporting – internal / external
  • templates – documents? mails? reports? presentations?
  • bug tracker – how are issues commented?
  • where is the database schema?

Infrastructure

  • SCM, FTP/WebDavs, Sonar, CI, bug tracker, artifacts repository, wiki
  • keystores, certificates
  • mailing lists (internal, external)
  • adresses, credentials, who creates accounts? who administrates?
  • environments – local, testing, production?
  • Can anyone, besides the team, access any of these (e.g. client reading bug tracker issues) ?

Processes

  • SCRUM? how does it really look like? how are user stories sized – hours or t-shirts (M, S, XL)? what meetings, how often etc., are daily standups held regularly
  • code reviews – formalized, informal, who does them? peer reviews? external audits of code?
  • any visualization tools? (well, these are the easiest to notice, aren’t they?)
  • what is the “definition of done” of this team?
  • any special recruiting process for this team?
  • build process – automated?
  • How are versions/releases created? What is a naming pattern? Are there different internal (for team) and external (for client) versions? How can one learn about the changes between versions X and Y?
  • statuses of issues on issue tracker (e.g. todo, in progree, done, accepted etc.)
  • production deploy & rollback, tools used – Puppet, Liquidbase?
  • code conventions – format (Eclipse formatter?), checkstyle etc, but also use of TODO/FIXME tags in code
  • SCM (SVN/git) – branches? how/when created, when merged?
  • CI – schedules, how are they set?

Testing

  • unit
  • integration
  • end2end
  • does client test?
  • automation? which requirements functional and non functional are being automatically tested?
  • code coverage – how high, is it automatically calculated, is code coverage of different tests merged?

Development Tools

  • what tools/software is being used by team members
  • OS? IDE? build tools? testing libraries? mocking libraries? code review tools?
  • specific applications for Win (Visio?, Outlook?)

Problems

  • what we know? what are the main problems from our point of view? (e.g. internal code quality, our build process, client?), does client is aware of this?
  • recent problems, what were the causes, are they fixed?
  • what is the main concern of client?
  • common bugs, how many critical bugs, are they added to the current sprint?

Client(s)

  • communication – how do we communicate with clients? with whom exactly should I talk about certain topics? who has the right to make decisions?
  • communication – how does client communicates with us?
  • communication – what hours is he available? does he answer emails immediately?
  • what does he value, what are his goals?
  • does he own the code?
  • does he has a say in technologies we used, should we ask him for approval for new libraries/tools that we plan to use?
  • is it possible to negotiate the scope?

Next steps

  • What is the most pressing matter? Are we late with anything?
  • Any meetings/telcos ahead?

Architecture

  • software
  • hardware

question-marks_0
Questions, questions, questions… Surely there are many more things to ask and topics to understand when you join a project. I will try to use the above list for the task at hand. Will see if it turns out to be any good.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • Email
  • Print

Related

  • team
  • Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Recent Posts

    • IAEDSK – Important Acronyms Every Dev Should Know
    • Chief Thought Leader
    • Why Sprint Goal?
    • Some Teal Thoughts
    • Your Data Are Correct But Your Chart Lies

    My Books

    Tags

    4dx agile book review code review conference culture daily decision taking effectiveness review facilitation feedback funny getting things done goal gossip gtd holacracy kanban leadership management management 3.0 meetings mindmap new year's resolution notes productivity rant reading remote work retrospective s3 scrum self improvement sociocracy sociocracy 3.0 soft skills sprint taleb team testing tips & tricks tools wip work in process work in progress

    Archives

    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • March 2014
    • November 2013
    • August 2012
    • November 2011
    • March 2011
    • September 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010

    Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    ©2019 Tomek's blog | WordPress Theme by Superb Themes
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.