How do you allocate time between programmers and tasks?

Question

Project management

There is a situation:
- 6 programmers
- 3 managers, everyone has their own projects and all the most important ones
- a bunch of tasks that need to be done right now, while you have to jump between projects, as a result, a bunch of bugs, etc.
Every 10 minutes, as a team leader, I am bombarded with corrections and improvements, not only do I not have time to check their tasks, I do not have time to distribute them...
We use Trello.
Tell me, what can be used to see the current tasks of each programmer for different projects and plan further loading?

Answer 1

We have 4 columns on the kanban board:
Now about each in a little more detail.
A task list, also known as a backlog , is a list of what needs to be done in general. This case is sorted by priorities, i.e. The topmost task is the most important, the bottommost is the least important. Separately, I note that only at this point in time. Marks "Important", "Important 1", "Important 2", "Urgent", "Hot", etc. should not be. If the task is on this list, then it is important for the team. Its execution is necessary for the normal operation of the team. I draw your attention to what exactly at the moment. As a team leader, you can make only one revision in this column - assign a color to each subordinate. For example, Ivan takes only blue tasks, Nikolay only yellow ones, etc. Urgent tasks are not within the competence of the team leader, this is the area of ​​responsibility of the management.
During- the tasks that your subordinates are currently working on. They don't work at all, but specifically at the moment when you open the board and look at it, your person is sitting in the IDE and writing / debugging code. The column must have a limit. All books recommend starting with 2n - 1, where N is the number of people in the team, and minus 1 because someone can get stuck with something and he will need help. The order of the tasks in this column is not important. What matters is how long they are there. You must have some response time, ie. if the task hangs there for the 3rd day, then you need to ask the conditional Nikolai what kind of problem he has there and whether he needs help with it there. Often, this column is split into two: in progress and pending. The second means that when the performer started working on the task, he did not find, say, access to hosting or data to FTP / cPanel, provided by the client turned out to be incorrect. The column "Delayed" already requires the reaction of managers in the spirit of "Call the client". Tasks from the "Postponed" column should be processed, completed, and moved back to the backlog by managers. Product teams usually don't use this column. Various digital agencies use this very often.
On the check - I think it's clear from the name. Your subordinate has completed the task, you/Managers/Client need to check it. Your subordinates can transfer tasks to this column, but only managers or you can transfer tasks from it.
Executedor Done - again, I think it's understandable. Completed tasks. At the end of the working week, by filling this column, you can evaluate the productivity of the team and / and the productivity of a particular developer, if you use the "Person - Color" scheme. Cards from this column are sent to the archive on Friday at 19:00 or when you kick out all the programmers from behind the monitors there. Also, at the end of each week, the backlog should be cleared of no longer relevant tasks. Remember what I wrote above? In the first column, we only have important tasks that are needed at the moment. If the client "stalled" or "crashed" - his tasks from the backlog should be sent to the archive, along with completed tasks on Friday at 19:00
Separately, I note that the appearance of tasks with the labels "Important 1", "Urgent", "Very-Very Urgent" in any management system, not only scram / kanban, indicates that the company has weak management. There is a task. It either needs to be done right now or in the near future, or it makes no sense to do it at all.
It should also be remembered that the replacement of management and / or management system, as well as changes in it, must come from the owner / director, or with his approval and full support. Otherwise, it will die out very quickly, ending with nothing. How you will convey this need to your Boss is a separate question.

Answer 2

You are a team leader, not a manager, you should not be concerned with determining the importance of tasks.
You need to delegate task prioritization to one of the managers.

Answer 3

Why is trello not suitable for this particular task - like on the board it should be clear who is doing what?
In general, there are products specifically for programmers that combine task management, code review, scheduling, and more (github, jira, vsts, youtrack, and so on).
For planning, there is an automatic calculation of various characteristics and all sorts of graphs. By the way, for the query "trello lead time" there are a number of add-ons that calculate such characteristics for trello.
From my point of view, it is necessary to achieve a reduction in maltitasking, because in the end it is inefficient. For example, to implement a kanban with a work in progress restriction - then just a free developer takes the first unassigned task and works on it to the end. Then it will be seen how much on average the task goes through the team and it will be possible to say how many tasks, in principle, can be implemented in some time.
Read about Scrum and Kanban. Most tools support them.

Answer 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dxe-2_FBHc

Answer 5

This is not a purely arithmetic task - you famously described 3-6-10 ...
It is much more efficient to always assign the same person to work on the same part of the project