Managing Computer Professionals

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Managing Computer Professionals

• Farrokh Alemi, Ph.D.

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Learning Objectives

• Understand the supervisory role of managers
• Understand the organizing role of managers
• Understanding differences between IT workers and
  other professionals

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Managers Perform Many Functions
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You Have Been Managing Computer Professionals
Motivate, coordinate and maintain control

• Each project has a manager
• The idea is to give you first hand experience of
  management
• How have you done as team manager?
• Most have run projects as separate contracts with
  individual team members
• Some have brought entire team together
• Others have done little coordination but
  enthusiastically participated as any team member

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Is Management a Science?

• A science that we can learn through review of
  field and laboratory experiments.
• An art that we can learn by doing. Most
  reasonable people can manage.
• An insight that we can get from other successful
  managers.

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What Is Management?

• Getting tasks done through others.
• In small organizations, or for new managers, it
  is often easier to get the task done yourself.
  How many of the group managers felt it was easier
  if they had done the assignment themselves?

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How Does Management Differ From Clinical Work?

• Managerial skills are different from technical,
  or clinical skills
• Helping others accomplish the task as opposed to
  doing it yourself
• Budget and planning as opposed to providing
  service with existing resources
• System thinking as opposed to focusing on
  individual patients
• Any other?

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Can Management Be Learned?

• Good managers were not borne with their skills.
• Management is not a personality trait.
• The first step in learning management skills is
  accepting the need for them.

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Management Is Not Common Sense

• The association between management and common
  sense is so strong as many equate a person "who
  cannot manage" with a person "who has no common
  sense and maybe is a little crazy" .
• But management and leadership is a learned
  concept.

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What Would Common Sense Tell Us Are the Answers
to

• If you pay someone for doing something they
  enjoy, they will come to like this task even
  more?
• Most people prefer challenging jobs with a great
  deal of freedom and autonomy
• Most people are more concerned with the size of
  their own salary than with the salary of others

• In bargaining with others it is usually best to
  start with a moderate offer -- near to the one
  you desire.
• In most cases, leaders should stick to their
  decisions once they have made them, even if it
  appears they are wrong.

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Problem With Common Sense in Management

• The advice is often based on analogies play on
  words that can be terribly misleading A camel
  is a horse put together by a committee." The
  image of camel as a distorted horse may make us
  believe that committees produce convoluted
  products.  But in truth team work is useful.

• Organizations can become victims of the latest
  management fads. When advice is not based on
  data, organization may go from one guru to
  another in search of success that eludes them
  because they are not looking at data on what
  works. 

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Management Functions

• Forecasting
• Planning
• Organizing
• Staffing
• Influencing
• Controlling
• Negotiating
• Un-organizing

Which onedid you doin your team?
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Forecasting

• Predicting the future is difficult.
• One advantage that managers do have in
  forecasting the future is that they can takes
  steps to make the anticipated future come about.
• Forecasts assume that history repeats itself
  That there are lessons to learn from how events
  have occurred in the past.
• Predicting future business operations and
  functions is by far more important than keeping
  pace with technology.

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Different Ways of Planning

• Asking people to do as they are told
• Parallel organizations
• Creating a champion for the idea
• Involving large number of employees in the
  planning process

How did youplan fir your teams?
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Organizing

• Managers organize by assigning tasks to various
  employees
• Specialization
• Departmentalization
• Span of management
• Assigning of authority
• Assigning of responsibilities
• Unity of command
• Line and staff assignments
• For computer professionals Networked remote
  tasks requires organization of social gatherings,
  legal contracts, etc.

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Staffing

• Staffing is the process of hiring personnel to
  work on the task
• Staffing also means looking after employees
  careers
• The environment for telecommuting workers is
  specially difficult
• Health insurance
• Communication
• Education

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Influencing

• Self interest
• Pay benefits
• Continued employment
• Other
• Challenge
• Social network
• Reminders
• Communication
• Attribution
• Work norms

What did you do?
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Controlling Negotiating

• Managers control budgets, resource allocation,
  and product quality
• Direct control or self control through data
• Version control
• Fair play

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Un-organizing

• It is seldom realized but one of the functions of
  a manger is to dismantle organizations. 
• Often the case with legacy systems.
• Rarely, managers need to dismantle the entire
  organization.
• Managers choose or may have to fire employees.
• Managers need to continuously improve work
  processes.

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Supervision of Remote Workers

• Data contradict the myth that office workers have
  an advantage over home based workers in their
  access to new training.
• Home based professionals are more committed to
  the work than to the company.
• Home based workers are more likely to be women,
  married and with children.
• Judged based on their productivity than based on
  their effort.

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Supervision of Remote Workers

• Office workers say that their work load is
  irregular.
• Office workers say they are more productive
  outside the office.
• Home based groups were more likely to visit
  customers.

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Supervision of Remote Workers

• Less than 20 of home workers and more than 80
  of office workers say that their work requires
  daily communication.
• Home work is more likely to be organized in
  smaller self contained activities than office
  work.
• Home based computer programmers assumed more
  responsibility for cost and time estimates for
  the job, testing the link among programs.

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Supervision of Remote Workers

• Office based groups seem to put more emphasize on
  income (pay and promotion)
• Home based group seem to emphasize the nature of
  the work (interesting work, flexible assignments,
  and keeping up their skills). 

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Are Programmers Different From Clinicians?

• Mogg says They are probably very task
  oriented, intelligent, and independent workers.
  They may lack the interpersonal skills of the
  average employee.
• Rabeno says Programmers are varied.
• Lloyd says The most obvious answer is that some
  are and some aren't.
• Wray says Absolutely, Programmers are 100
  different.

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Are Programmers Different From Clinicians?

• Onsite and off-site
• Challenge, training, customer relation, etc
• Working with machines versus people
• Uninterrupted work process
• Work hours
• Language and communication styles
• Disdain for hierarchy (cluster organizations)
• Power based on shared information versus unique
  skills

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Table of Content

• Learning Objectives
• Managers Perform Many Functions
• Is Management a Science?
• What Is Management?
• How Does Management Differ From Clinical Work?
• Can Management Be Learned?
• Management Is Not Common Sense

• Management Functions
• Forecasting
• Different Ways of Planning
• Organizing
• Staffing
• Influencing
• Controlling Negotiating
• Un-organizing
• Supervision of Remote Workers