How to Manage Software Development Teams Effectively

As a new or experienced manager, you might find yourself asking, 'How do you successfully manage software developers?', especially as technology continues to evolve. While different teams thrive with different approaches, success often comes back to core leadership principles. The key is putting your team's needs first and finding ways to align their work with organizational objectives.

Whether you're an experienced developer stepping into team leadership for the first time or an engineering manager looking to strengthen your approach, in this article you'll find actionable takeaways to help your team thrive.

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Management isn't one-size-fits-all. While many guides try to help you find "your perfect management style," psychologist Daniel Goleman takes a more practical approach.

He suggests that managers are leaders. Great leadership is about flexibility — choosing the right style for each situation and team member.

Through his research, Goleman identified six distinct leadership styles managers can use and adapt based on their situation. First introduced in his influential 2000 Harvard Business Review article "Leadership That Gets Results," these styles have become a cornerstone framework for effective leadership:

1. Coercive: When immediate action is needed, this style focuses on clear direction and compliance
2. Authoritative: This style unites teams around a compelling vision, giving clear direction while allowing flexibility in how to get there
3. Pacesetting: Setting high standards and leading by example, this style works best with self-motivated teams
4. Affiliative: By focusing on emotional bonds and team harmony, this style builds strong, resilient teams
5. Democratic: When you need buy-in and fresh ideas, this style brings everyone's voice to the table
6. Coaching: Looking to develop long-term capabilities? This style helps team members grow and excel

However, the idea isn’t to pick one and always use it. It’s about using the right style at the right time — that’s the mark of a great leader.

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As a leader, it's your role to support and motivate your team to become high performing, but this first starts with understanding what this looks like in practise. What are the key indicators of a high performing software development team?

In an effort to understand what makes teams successful –Google conducted research, code-named Project Aristotle. They aimed to identify patters and behaviours within teams that lead to high performance.  The project was appropriately named after the philosopher's insight that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".

Partnering with executives across the world, to study 180 teams made up of engineering project teams, sales pods and a mix of high and low performers, Google's research found that a high performing team wasn't just about who was on the team – it was about how they worked together.

The Google team identified five key factors that created a successful team – ranked by importance below:

1. Psychological Safety — Teams excel when members feel safe to take interpersonal risks. They feel confident that they  won't be embarrassed or punished for speaking up, asking questions, making mistakes, or bringing new ideas to the table. Psychological safety is rooted in trust.
2. Dependability — On high-performing teams, members consistently deliver quality work, on time. It's about following through with commitments while maintaining high standards.
3. Structure and Clarity — Everyone needs to understand what's expected of them and how they'll achieve it. This includes clear goals (like OKRs), well-defined processes, and transparent consequences of performance.
4. Meaning — Team members need to find purpose in their work or its outcomes. This could look different for everyone — from financial security to self-expression to helping the team succeed.
5. Impact — Teams thrive when members can see how their work contributes to broader organizational goals. It's about knowing your efforts make a real difference.

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In our recent blog, we introduced 3 core areas of successful leadership, borrowing from Julie Zhou's 'The Making of A Manager' book. Julie outlines these areas to be:

1. Purpose — ensuring that your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it
2. People — developing trust-based relationships with your team, understanding their strengths and weaknesses and making good decisions about who should do what (including hiring and firing when necessary)
3. Process — mastering effective meetings, planning for tomorrow, and nurturing a healthy culture

The 3 Ps serves as the foundations for our practical leadership tips, outlined below.

Tips to improve your team's 'Purpose'

Define your team's  purpose clearly (really clearly!)

A team's purpose is their "why". It needs to be more than just a nice idea and specific enough to guide real action.

‍The best visions do 3 key things:

1. They're specific enough that teams know what success looks like – avoid using vague phrases like "help users" or "improve experiences".
2. They're measurable so the team can track progress
3. They're bold enough to inspire and motivate the team  to show up and do great work

This combination creates something powerful: a shared direction that turns individual contributions into meaningful impact

‍Let's look at an example:

There's a big  difference between "We aim to improve connectivity" and "We will connect a billion people to meaningful communities within five years." The first is vague, and doesn't tell us much about your team's impact. The second version gives everyone a clear picture of what we're working toward, why it matters and how it's measured.

‍Questions to help you define your team's purpose:

• Assume you have a magic wand that makes everything your team does go perfectly. What do you hope will be different in two to three years compared to now?
• How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? What do you hope will be your team’s reputation in a few years? How far off is that fromwhere things are today?
• What unique superpower(s) does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like for your team to be twice as good? Five times as good?

Invite collaboration on the purpose

A vision becomes more powerful when teams actively help shape it. By involving engineers and product teams in vision discussions, you build shared ownership and accountability for the outcomes. Regular check-ins help ensure the vision stays practical as technical realities and market needs evolve.

‍Handy tips:

• Invite your team in early – when you are forming your vision initially and as you evolve it over time
• Run quarterly vision reviews that connect directly to your purpose to tasks
• Use retros to openly discuss successes (like scaling the scheduling API) and challenges (like database performance bottlenecks) relating to the vision

Let's look at an example:

Consider running a quarterly technical review where your team examines progress toward serving 100,000 healthcare providers. Engineers might identify that the current database architecture needs to evolve from serving individual clinics to supporting hospital networks. These practical insights help refine both the vision and the technical roadmap needed to achieve it.

Integrate the purpose throughout the team

For a purpose to drive real change, every team member needs to see how their work contributes to it. Making this connection clear isn't a one-time thing - it requires consistent reinforcement in daily conversations and decisions. When software engineers understand how their code moves the needle toward serving customers, they make better technical choices and stay aligned with team priorities.

‍Handy tips:

• Ensure team members can relate their tasks to the team's vision. Decisions become easier when aligned with overarching goals.
• Reinforce alignment through repetition in meetings, emails, and one-on-ones.
  • During one-on-ones, ask: "How do you see your current project supporting our bigger goals?"
  • In team meetings, suggest: "Let's talk about how this sprint connects to what we're trying to achieve"
  • When planning, suggest: "Here's how this new feature fits into our broader direction"

Let's look at an example: During sprint planning, you might explain: "We're building this scheduling API endpoint now because it will let medical practices integrate our platform with their existing systems. This is key to reaching our goal of serving 100,000 healthcare providers by next year. The more seamless we make integration, the faster practices can get up and running."

Tips to improve 'People' management

Your job as a manager is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. When thinking about people, leaders need to develop trust with their team, understand their strengths and weaknesses, coach team members to be their best, and make smart decisions about who should do what (including hiring and hiring when necessary).

‍Play to your team's strengths and address weaknesses quickly

‍To get your team doing their best work, it's important to play to your team's strengths, while directly addressing weaknesses swiftly. Identify the things each team member does exceptionally well and find ways to use those skills for maximum impact. While doing so, balance supporting your team to improve their weaknesses, whether through training, coaching, role adjustments or ongoing dialogue relating to performance.

‍Handy tips:

• To ensure your team feels safe to be at their best, be sure to build trust  early. As mentioned above, Google's Project Aristotle research shows that even the extremely smart, high-powered employees at Google needed a psychologically safe work environment to contribute the talents they had to offer.
• Invest the time in working with each individual team member to identify and understand what their strengths are – do they have technical strengths others don't have? Are they great learners? Do they have a knack for leading and mentoring others? Once you land on what these are, together, adjust your team's workload to create opportunities for them to build their strengths, while improving their weaknesses along the way
• When performance issues arise, investigate whether there is a technical skills gap present (needing training on new technologies) or an engagement challenge (misalignment with team goals, demotivated, etc). Be ready to have direct conversations and address issues as they arise

Let's look at an example:

‍Let's say that you notice one engineer excels at optimizing database queries while another has a talent for building intuitive APIs. You might assign the first engineer to improve the scheduling platform's performance as you scale to more healthcare providers, while having the second focus on making the integration experience smoother.. Meanwhile, you work with a third engineer who's struggling with code quality by setting up regular pair programming sessions focused on test-driven development.

‍Set clear expectations and provide continuous feedback

‍Setting clear expectations early is crucial for team success, yet misaligned expectations often lead to performance issues. Managers need to clearly communicate both what needs to be done and why it matters. Regular, timely feedback helps catch any potential issues before they grow into bigger problems while keeping the focus on growth and improvement rather than criticism.

‍Handy tips:

• Give specific, timely feedback that balances recognition with areas for growth. We find that the OILS model can be a great framework for delivering feedback
• Create regular feedback opportunities through code reviews, architecture discussions, and one-on-ones
• Don't forget about yourself! Ask your team for 360 degree feedback, to ensure you are modelling the behavior you want to see

Tips to improve 'Process' management

‍Build flexible processes to enable continuously improvement

‍Just like software, processes need regular updates to stay effective. A process that worked perfectly for a small team might need significant changes as an organization grows. The key is treating processes like products - testing them, gathering feedback, and improving them based on real-world use.

‍Handy tips:

• Run blameless retrospectives after major product releases to review how they went
• Document and share learnings - if one team finds a better way to handle provider data validation, make sure other teams can benefit
• Regularly check if processes still serve their purpose as your platform and team grow

Let's look at an example:

‍Let's say that your deployment process starts causing delays as you scale to more healthcare providers. In the post-mortem, the team identifies that the current CI/CD pipeline isn't handling database migrations efficiently. Instead of placing blame, you focus on solutions: automating more testing, improving rollback procedures, and updating deployment schedules to minimize impact on medical practices. These improvements make the process more robust for future growth.

‍Prioritize clear communication

‍Clear communication is the backbone of any successful process. When teams aren't clear on who owns what or why certain decisions were made, even well-designed processes can break down. Strong communication helps everyone understand their role in delivering value.

‍Handy tips:

• Run focused stand-ups where software engineers can share progress updates on their work – regular communication helps ensure nothing is missed, and course correction happens early
• Create clear ownership for different parts of the product or system you are working on

Let's look at an example:

‍In your daily stand-up, engineers should clearly communicate their focus: "I'm working on the bulk scheduling API endpoint that will let large medical practices import their existing appointment data. I'm blocked by some questions about data validation rules - could I grab 15 minutes with the team lead to discuss?" This kind of specific, action-oriented communication helps the team stay coordinated and move faster toward their goals.

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their team to be at their best – using Multitudes' insights, managers can identify where their team is unblocked, who needs feedback, whether team members are working out of hours, and more. With this data, managers can make data-informed decisions, to get the best out of their team.

Multitudes integrates with your existing development tools, such as GitHub and Jira, to provide insights into your team's productivity and collaboration patterns.

With Multitudes, you can:

• Automatically track  key engineering performance metrics, such as Change Lead Time and Deployment Frequency
• Get visibility into work patterns and where the team’s time went, e.g. into feature work vs. maintenance work and bug fixes
• Identify collaboration patterns and potential knowledge silos within your team
• Understand individual and team health through metrics such as out-of-hours work, incidents, and meetings
• Get nudges via Slack about blocked work and who might need more support, sent just in time for your next stand-up, retro, or 1:1

Our clients ship 25% faster without sacrificing code quality.

Ready to unlock your  high performing team?

‍Try Multitudes today!