7 Golden Rules to Impress Your Project Leader

7 Golden Rules to Impress Your Project Leader

There are several ways to impress your boss. You could sing, dance or buy him/her a beer - it all depends on what kind of boss you have. How about losing a tennis game? For our sake, we will focus on impressing a technical boss, such as your team leader, technical leader or project leader, the person who is responsible for assigning you work and reviewing your work the first time you deliver it. The person can also be a direct client you are working for.

With that said, this comes from within me. If I am a client or a project leader or a technical leader, this is what I would look for.

DOS days are gone when the definition of an expert programmer correlated with your typing speed and memory. The faster you type without looking at manuals (command syntaxes), the sharper a programmer you were considered.

Those days are long gone. Welcome to the Visual world. Welcome to the RAD (Rapid Application Development) and RIA (Rich Internet Applications) world. Welcome to the Web 2.0.

Today, you do not need to memorize commands and syntaxes. Tools such as Visual Studio 2010 Intellisense, ReSharper and SQL Prompt are here for you.

So what exactly do you need to focus on?

A computer program solves a problem. First, you need to find the most efficient and effective solution to your problems. Anybody can write code. Yes, that is true. Nowadays, anybody can write code, but the winner is the one who writes the most efficient code.

Check out my blog Top 10 Things Every Developer MUST Do

Besides writing efficient code, what else should you keep in mind?

You need to know the following:

• What tools and technologies are most efficient for your project?
• What user interfaces are best suited for your application?
• Have you commented and formatted your code?
• Have you used the latest features provided by the tools and technologies?
• Have you tested your code?

So how can you improve? Here are some of the pointers I noticed from my personal experience. I have been involved with every aspect of the software development life cycle from meeting non-technical clients, understanding their needs, writing detailed specifications, writing design documents to coding, testing, installation and development. I have also managed several projects simultaneously with in-house developers, offshore teams, and a blend of both.

Here are my 7 golden rules in my book:

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