Question

Right now, my project is slightly requirements starved; the project managers can’t get good requirements as fast as we can build them, so we’re being less efficient than we probably could be.

How many developers per project manager makes for a good balance?

Answer 1

There is no such thing as “the golden developers to PM ratio”. The problem itself is not likely to be rooted in the ratio itself, but whether you find yourself starved for work on a project it most probably means that the proejct manager is not doing their job very well:

• One too many people were allocated for the project to start with.
• The task you’re assigned to is waiting on an external dependency. PM should have provided you with an alternative tasks as part of the ongoing risk management.
• You’ve completed task early and PM didn’t prepare to take advantage of the situation by letting you refactor, bring documentation up to date or similar. Being able to capitalise on an opportunity is just another side of risk management.
• There is a bottleneck in the project organisation, that is to say things cannot be scoped, planned, quality assured as fast as you can deliver new software.

• PM falling for the classic software mistake #19:

  Wasted time during the fuzzy front end. The “fuzzy front end” is the time before the project starts, the time normally spent in the approval and budgeting process. It’s not uncommon for a project to spend months or years in the fuzzy front end and then to come out of the gates with an aggressive schedule. It’s much easier and cheaper and less risky to save a few weeks or months in the fuzzy front end than it is to compress a development schedule by the same amount.