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The main thing to realize is that this is primarily a people-based challenge, not a technical challenge. There's actually a good chance that some of the team me

The main thing to realize is that this is primarily a people-based challenge, not a technical challenge. There's actually a good chance that some of the team members know better practices but feel like they don't have time to implement them. I would start by having one-on-one conversations with each member of the team to understand what they think the current problems are, what they think solutions might be, and what they think the team's current strengths are. Then if you want to implement a solution, you can speak to things team members specifically told you. For example, if several people complain that they feel like they don't know what changes other people are making – that's a great time for code reviews. The root causes for those problems can come from other teams as well. I once led a team that had a terrible codebase. Upon talking to the engineers, they had a pretty good idea of how to write good code, but were stuck with a legacy codebase and management would never let them take time to refactor. So I went to the CEO with a description of refactoring projects, how long I expected them to take, and how much time I expected them to save. Translating it into dollar terms made it much easier to get his agreement. Above all, remember your employees are smart and probably have good ideas for any "obvious" problems – so you'll have to dig a bit to find the non-obvious root issues.

user5994461 8y ago
>>> The main thing to realize is that this is primarily a people-based challenge, not a technical challenge. There's actually a good chance that some of the team members know better practices but feel like they don't have time to implement them. Not necessarily in this context. The project was outsourced abroad, probably to the lowest bidder. It's possible that contractors were sold as developers but have never developed anything before and don't know any good practice.

user5994461 8y ago

>>> The main thing to realize is that this is primarily a people-based challenge, not a technical challenge. There's actually a good chance that some of the team members know better practices but feel like they don't have time to implement them. Not necessarily in this context. The project was outsourced abroad, probably to the lowest bidder. It's possible that contractors were sold as developers but have never developed anything before and don't know any good practice.