Working with impulsive boss

pushpop

Hi there

I'd love to know if anyone else has had this type of manager and has experience in dealing with them.

CreepingDeath

Are you a development manager or a team lead?
Team lead means nothing, and you've no authority.

If he is making you responsible for bugs/issues, then you have to have the authority to go with it. You can't blame someone who doesn't have the power to control a process.

Unfortunately small companies / start ups will typically have a hectic software development life cycle.
The boss will do everything to get clients on-board first, at the detriment of software process and quality, just to get the company to break-even after a huge initial investment.

You might have to have a word with the dodgy web developer and tell them that they need to increase the quality of their code. Talk them
through how to test, create unit tests etc.
Do you have any automated tests?
At least to sanity check your product every night?

Do you have project plans that ye follow ?
You might
a) assume developers are only 80% available to you in your project plans to account for customer support/your bosses issues
b) each time your boss retasks one of your team members, you tell him that the original task will now be X days late, pushing back the schedule.

TrueDub

Have you actually discussed this with him? I mean, laid it out for him the way you've laid it out for us?

Until you've done that, you don't really know the possibilities and what's likely to work. Best case scenario is that he changes, worst case is he blows his top, but either way you then know where you stand.

SalteeDog

Given you have only been there two weeks then tread carefully.

The Corinthian

My guess is this is you're in a very small company and this is your 'boss' in the sense of a director of the company, perhaps even the CEO, rather than a middle manager.

If so, there's not much you can do about it, other than try to find a way to manage them and keep a paper trail for when the blame-storming begins.

If you get feature creep parachuted in by your boss, then you should always fire out an email to him citing the impact to the project. Take time also to do a preliminary spec, describing your understanding of what he wants.

It won't stop problems arising, but it'll scupper any attempt at blaming you; after all you'll have warned him that adding functionality half-way through would result in issues and you did give him the opportunity to review and correct any expected functionality. If he didn't act on your emails, or even read them, then that is his responsibility, not yours.

As for managing your boss, that's for you to figure out, as it's highly dependant on his personality. Much of the time it's about pandering to their ego and letting them have your own way, but however you approach it, the aim it to minimize interference, or at least channel it into more productive forms.