Equation 1: Have a Clear, Actionable Plan of Attack

The more time a developer spends wondering which requirement or task to tackle next and how to address it, the less time he is actually performing productive, rewarding work—creative tasks that help the organization achieve its goals.
To keep developers focused on performing productive work, define tasks properly, have a system for distributing tasks, and assign tasks properly.

Define tasks properly

In software development, tasks are often quite nebulous: they are vaguely defined, and thus it is difficult for developers to determine where to start tackling them and how to proceed. To overcome this challenge, it’s essential to have someone (e.g., an architect or manager) with a good conceptual grasp of the application being developed. This person can take high-level requirements and translate them into more granular tasks that a developer can quickly understand and then successfully implement.

When developers are assigned to work on smaller tasks (for example, work tasks that are scoped to be no greater than one day) as opposed to being assigned to participate in one large, nebulous task, experience has shown that they become much more productive. Since the developers understand exactly where to start and what to do, they become much more efficient: their tasks are attainable and progress is immediately recognized.

Have a system for distributing tasks
Ideally, developers should always have a prioritized list of tasks in front of them, in their natural development environment. This reduces any guesswork as to what is expected and how to proceed.

Assign tasks properly
If a task is assigned to a developer who is unfamiliar with the related piece of code, the implementation time (and the risk of debugging and rework) will be significantly greater than if that same task were assigned to a developer who was intimately familiar with the related code.

To learn more about how to optimize task management with Parasoft Concerto, see Project Center – Manage Tasks.