What Makes a Great Technical Manager
Jurgen’s post, How to Select a Fine Technical Manager, along with the posts he responded to prompted this one. I’m not agreeing much with Jurgen today. I suspect it’s because we have very different experience. In my experience, only technical people who want to manage want to be managers–unless HR has screwed up the salary ranges. If the salary ranges don’t go high enough for technical staff to make a good living, they want to be managers to increase salary.
I addressed part of this question in How Technical Does a Project Manager Have to Be?. And the answers are similar for a people, not project, manager.
Technical managers need to have these technical skills: None.
Seriously, when was the last time you needed your manager to tell you how to solve a technical problem? Unless your manager is coaching you, the last time was when you only had a year or two of experience.
Technical managers need an in-depth understanding of the process by which the technical staff can perform the work. That may well mean an experience in where coding can trip developers up, where testers might have blind spots, how to help business analysts talk to the people who have requirements and how to translate those requirements into user stories, and so on. But the manager does not need to be the star of the group–and in many cases, the star is not interested in management, so makes a bad manager.
What’s way more important is all the interpersonal skills. Here are some from the chapter in Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers…:
- Provide effective feedback.
- Influence and negotiation skills.
- Problem solving and decision-making. Managers need to be able to solve problems and make decisions in the face of ambiguity.
- Delegation.
- Ability to manage things, such as projects or groups of tasks. Technical people don’t need supervisors; they need leadership, guidance, and effective decision-making, especially when faced with too many options or insufficient information.
- Ability to observe current state and choose another action to change state.
Jurgen goes on to say
Give the job to a technical person who never asked for it.
Well, I don’t buy that either. I have asked people who were critical of management if they wanted to try it. Some organizations make effective management just about impossible. I was a middle manager, had a technical lead who was critical of everything, and asked him if he wanted to try management for a few months. He lasted three months, and gave up. I told him not every place was as screwed up as that one, and to try management again later.
Potential managers need to want to work with people. They need to make decisions without enough information. They need to wean themselves off the technical work. They need to learn how to hire, give feedback, and all kinds of other management skills. (To see how great managers work, read Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management.) But they don’t need to be dumped into a management role, or think they aren’t good at technology and that’s why they’re managers.
BTW, if you’re wondering, I started my career as a developer, did some small-project management and people management starting once I’d been working a few years, still developing. I became a tester and took on a bunch of project management and coordination work because I liked it. After a couple of years, I became a full-time project and program manager. After a few years, I became a manager, then a group manager, then a director. Then, I went back to developing test code for a while, then a manager, then a consultant. Don’t think you need a linear career path. You can try management and return to your technical work if you don’t like it or if you’re not ready for more responsibility. But don’t try management unless you want to work with people. Management is a people-centric role.
4 comments May 27th, 2008