Software projects management by developers and business professionals
Published on May 10th, 2025 By zooboole
The call with my Mentor
Today, on a phone call with one of my mentors from Nigeria, I discussed how messy it's for an experienced software developer to manage a software project or to have a software business. I have been building this very website myself and thinking about the business aspect for years. I also run a side SaaS called oyakoo.store. So what I am sharing comes from experience — both good and bad.
Two different project managers
Our discussion sparked after he asked me to help him become a software developer. A request he has been making for years. I know him well to be someone who studied business and who is always busy. He owns an application that drives his organization so well. So when he revisited this same topic, I told him, once more, that software development is a time-demanding exercise. He is already too busy to probably get enough time to learn it well. After all, this is not even the main issue because we've seen many people transition from medicine, accounting, etc to software development. If you have the willpower and the drive, you will surely learn it and become good as well. But the key concern about time starts once you know how to code and want to build or maintain your own applications or even for others. You quickly realize that one thing will always take up most of your time, making it difficult to focus on other aspects of your (professional) life.
So I suggested to him to look at the project management aspect instead. I made him understand that he has already proven himself a good project manager when he managed his own application project that I built for him. He is a good listener, patient, and knows exactly what is needed in the application for the good of the business. He has a good habit of always testing the application himself and finding bugs, and even knows how to log these bugs for the developer to understand very well. He knows how to have good and productive meetings with zero pressure or stress. He always makes sure that the developer is in good condition to work. Even if he has to go beyond his power to provide both equipment and sustenance. That's what great project managers do best.
Their counterparts are people like the ones I met recently when I was invited to join a project in Benin. The project manager wanted me to come in as a supervisor and make sure both the frontend and backend guys are doing the right thing. After a flashy promise to send me part of my payment right after our phone call, I accepted. Upon accepting the deal, they starting calling for standups at 5AM my time. There is no way you could go back to anything other thing than the project after that. During the daytime, they will be pestering you with questions about your progress and the technologies you are using to do what and what. I lasted in this for two good weeks and a few days. And up until that time, he delegated someone to keep on worrying about signing a contract before he could even pay. A contract that required that I also take part in the frontend development. I still agreed. After every email with the contract signed, they return to ask me to sign a different way, or a different contract I don't even know. I quickly realized how much time these people consumed in my life. I decided to inform him that I will retire from the project. As soon as I told him that, guess what he did. He just replied, "OK", then went to the project whatsapp group and posted that he thanks me for my time with me and they were happy to see me leave the project, and immediately removed me from the WhatsApp group. I must admit that the main reason why I had to leave them was how toxic that man was towards the developers. I tried my best to keep calm, but he was super negative and never encouraged people. In addition, he simply failed to pay me and kept on using me.
What I learned
You can see the contrast in these two situations. One good observation I made with these two projects is that, in the first project, my friend, who has no prior knowledge in technology and project management, was able to manage the project easily and never interfered with the technology issues. In fact, we built the first version of the app somewhere 2018. To me, as a tech-savvy, it felt like a simple MVP. But he, as a business-minded and growth-oriented individual, saw a great tool and raised his organization to the top. For him, tt was a launchpad for impact.
In the contrary, the manager in the second project, I heard later that he was the one to suggest that the project is built using micro-services architecture, that the frontend is handled with VueJs, which we had no good experience in, and the backend services with Laravel, etc. It was a complete dictatorship environment. He was so busy to understand every code that the developers were writing. He would ask them for example to just get a package for every tiny procedure. He hates original code; he wants patches of packages all around.
Advice for business people
The key takeaway and lesson I gave my friend is that a project manager who has a good understanding of software development, or a software developer who is turning entrepreneur and develops or is involved in the development of their solutions, tends to waste time, and has high expectations that cause project delays and failure. That’s why it’s hard for software engineers to manage businesses — we get too deep in the code, and forget the mission. But if business people learn to lead well — with trust, not control — we can build truly great things.
