How to solve the problem of insufficient management in a small team of web developers?

Question

Project management

There is the following situation for consideration:
I work in a small web development team, 3 developers and 1 head - a manager who searches and communicates with customers, compiling technical specifications and other administration. We do web development, mainly backend for cms, various integrations and other small-medium tasks that a manager finds on freelance.
Our problem is that the manager cannot cope with the generation of tasks due to constant communication with customers on 3 or more projects, which is why sometimes we have an emergency, and sometimes developers sit idle. As a result, we get not very high rates of income from our activities. We do not have any accounting of hours, and other KPIs, because there is no time for this.
At the moment, the manager sees the solution to this problem in the search for an additional salesperson who should take on most of the responsibilities for finding orders and compiling TK. But for a long time it has not been possible to do this, because in our small town there are no applicants with knowledge in IT, who are able to understand development and draw up technical specifications for website development.
What can you advise for this situation? Have you experienced something like this?
Thank you!

Answer 1

Lack of resources is the main problem that everyone complains about. However, this is often not a problem, but a symptom. If you now have low incomes, then the salesperson will only aggravate everything in the medium term. Try to enter from the other side.
In general, management is never a bottleneck, in this part of the process everything happens quite quickly (which is why there is only one, and there are three of you developers). The bottleneck is usually development, testing, but not the preparation of technical specifications or the distribution of tasks. At the development stage, there are much more tasks than at the previous stages.
Rather, your problem is called "sometimes thick, sometimes empty", that is, the flow of tasks is unevenly distributed in time. Your backlog of tasks should be constantly filled, otherwise simple.
Understand why the task backlog is sometimes empty. You can do this with a Kanban board. Describe in detail all the stages of obtaining a result for your client, for example:
1. search for a client
2. negotiations
3. preparation of TOR
4. approval of TOR
5. contract
6. work plan
7. development
8. ...
The more stages you mark, the higher the probability of finding the real reason for the lack of tasks at stage 7.
Many urgent, but short projects will lead to a rush job for a month, and then you will be idle. It is necessary to distribute the load in such a way that there is always work. For example, find long-term projects, find additional. task channel (upwork, etc). It is necessary to form a pipeline of projects and build deadlines in such a way as to evenly distribute the load. Think about marketing, where to get more clients in order to discard unprofitable projects and take on those where you can make good money.

Answer 2

The leader is right. There should be such a scheme: salesperson -> project manager -> developers.
The salesperson looks for and leads clients, all the client’s wishes are discussed with the manager, who, in turn, plans the entire project (together with you or on his own), describes all the tasks for you, monitors your work, and so on. You, in turn, do exactly what you are told, all this is fixed (in some kind of Trello). Everyone is busy with their own business. Of course, somewhere you can intersect, but in a normal way - it should be that way.

Answer 3

The appearance of a salesperson will solve only one problem - with downtime.
If a salesperson has a good skill and enough knowledge, he will be able to provide enough work for everyone. In my opinion, a convenient solution is to appoint one of the developers as a team lead and give him the "power" to compile and edit the TOR.
The team leader can take on the role of detailing tasks and contact the manager only about global changes.

Answer 4

1 manager for 3 developers, in my opinion, is quite a normal formula.
I suspect that the issue is precisely in the planning of time and the normal distribution of the load, which you must try to distribute in an approximately even layer in order to exclude peaks - rush jobs and dips - sitting idle. And this, in my opinion, depends on how long your manager manages to agree with the customer.
To take another salesperson - there is a risk of getting into a situation where you get a constant rush...

Answer 5

obviously what needs to be raised in the capabilities of one of the developers