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Why are leaders critical in Software Development

Software development is becoming harder and harder to deliver up to customer satisfaction. We all know the Standish reports from the past. I do not need to repeat them here.

Agile development has been around for over 10 years now and waterfall, well I imagine the pyramids were built by a waterfall project plan. Projects today are hard to deliver either way. Clients want everything cheap and fast. Project managers do not like things to change. Developers want to build a space shuttle when an airplane will do. Analysis want customers to make up their mind. Product managers want everything faster. Then, there are testers, designers, server teams, DBA and best of all customers.

All of these team members have tasks to be completed to delivery a feature, iteration, release or a complete project. Managers will ask all kinds of questions about these tasks. "How much more time will that feature take?" "You are over you estimate on that ticket, why? "How many bugs were opened yesterday?"

Managers will focus on all the things these people do. Projects need a leader to focus on the people that are doing things. I feel leaders are the next evolution to software development. Leaders will ask questions like: "We seem to go over a lot of our estimates, why do you think this happens?" "Is there something or someone that is holding you up?" "What can we change this iteration that will improve our product or process?" Leaders focus on people and processes that create impacting change hopefully for the better. (Not all decisions are correct.)

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