It's no surprise that many application development managers feel trapped in a never-ending cycle of high-pressure projects. With budget cutbacks, pressure to prove greater ROI, and staffing reductions, ADMs are struggling to meet even their most basic commitments--and they're not alone.

Recent industry surveys rank job burnout as IT pros' number one issue, with nearly half of the respondents stating that their jobs are highly stressful. The impact on development managers can be exponential, as increased employee stress leads to reductions in productivity and quality.

Successfully addressing these issues is a balancing act between effective stress management skills and smart project practices. This doesn't mean micromanaging every nuance of each assigned project, but rather strategising, prioritising, and planning work. It's your responsibility to ensure that your teams have what they need to be effective. Your job as a manager becomes one of guide, obstruction removal, and activist.

Smart project management practices
The following list identifies commonsense project management practices that should be in your repertoire:

• Scheduling: For instance, try not to schedule projects to deliver in the fourth quarter because it's rare that you'll have your full staff to complete development and conduct testing at this time of year.
• Prioritisation: Think about whether the project really needs the bells and whistles added before delivery.
• Resourcing: If you're in a crunch, your developers probably shouldn't be the ones worrying about writing user documentation.
• Alignment: When you're trying to decide which projects to complete, remember that senior management cares mainly about projects that support the business's strategic goals.
• Planning: Improper, incomplete, or nonexistent project planning can reap havoc on project timelines. Many advocates claim that project planning can reduce timelines by as much as 50 percent and increase quality proportionally.
• Leadership and control: Even if you were a developer prior to becoming an ADM, development is no longer your task. Your charge is to eliminate the roadblocks that get in the way of your team's ability to meet their goals. This can run the entire spectrum of conflict resolution to providing a positive leadership attitude and encouragement.
• Communication: If you know a project is going to be late, be sure to communicate this fact early and often. As a manager, you know the worst consequences are always a response to unfortunate "surprises."
• Expectations: Though you may want everything to go according to your plan, you should prepare yourself to respond to challenges. This requires continuous risk planning and adjustment.
• Architecting: Enforce adherence to organisational and industry development standards, best practices, design patterns, tools, techniques, etc.
• Execution: Do only what you plan, yet react appropriately and swiftly to needs or issues.
• Quality assurance: Develop test plans early with the design. Ensure unit, integration, and acceptance test planning exists before the design is completed and development has started. Then, execute the test plans. Regression test as necessary when making changes.

Finally, remember the human factor. It's your people that will bear the brunt of any slippages. Therefore, overtime, long hours, or additional resources can help the project in the short-term, but not without adding up costs and impacting morale in the long-term.

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