Managing the Manager, Part 2

Another of the manager's responsibilities is ensuring that a sense of
"team" is instilled in your professionals. "Team," as it says, means
more than one working toward a focused goal. And one of the ways to
reach the goal is to have your team members' coordinated efforts
strategically directed toward achieving the goal so that all are carried
to victory. No one is working in a vacuum. It's especially important for
IT professionals to realize, even though they may be working on one
aspect of a project, it is a piece of a total picture and needs to fit
with the rest of the schema.

Your database administrator should be talking to your developers. Your
developers should be coordinating with your beta testers. Your beta
testers should be reporting back to your project manager. Your project
manager should be a central clearing house for what's on track and
keeping you informed. Your system administrators and security analysts
should be in the loop as well, checking and double checking on what's
been done and whether there are any conflicts as well as what test code
needs to be cleaned out.

One special aspect of being a pro in this highly specialized field is
that egos will grow. That means there are some who may be difficult when
it comes to dealing with others either with sharing information or
simply communicating in plain, understandable terms, or just being
tactful. Some reasons for this are that the market is extremely
competitive and people are going to be protective of what they've
earned. Next, because "techian" and "programese" have now replaced a lot
of their normal vocabulary, your pros will forget that not everyone
speaks those languages. And with the need to do things quickly, added to
highly specialized skills, patience with others can become a weak point.

In many respects, these characteristics are justified because those
stripes were earned through a lot of hard work and proof. But it's up to
you to keep them focused on the team's reaching the goal in a positive
way. They need to work toward the focus with the other team members.

To that end, it would behoove you to have a system whereby your managers
start out understanding how their part of the project fits in with the
other parts. Ask them to do milestone checks with the rest of the teams
for quality assurance purposes.

Another way to help your people see their work as part of the big
picture is to vary their assignments, where possible. But make certain
they're still communicating with the rest of the teams.

Read more about opinion in ITworld's Opinion section

» posted by ITworld staff

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