What is the role of a manager?

Opinions vary on a manager's role from writing code to ordering dinner. I tend to like my managers to be technically trained and competent individuals who have learned they can be more effective helping many people succeed. I have talked about what makes a good manager in other posts but what should they actually do in the organization? Here are the basics:

• Planning
• Hiring
• Employee development
• Execution

Managers help their bosses and their employees plan. This includes budgets, resource capacity planning for projects, schedules, etc. Expect that this is an ongoing task and will take a good percentage of time. In a fast-paced industry things change quickly from customer requirements to found opportunities. Managers must learn to hone their accuracy and deliver estimates quickly.

Once a budget is set, the most important thing a manager can do is hire. Without people they cannot accomplish the tasks at hand. This must be a concerted effort that managers spend time each day doing. From screening candidates to shepherding the process to setting expectations of interviewers and approvers. This can be daunting but is a cornerstone to any company's success.

People development is often overlooked. We cannot expect that all people who come to work for us were born with all the skills and knowledge they need. Nor can we assume they acquired the skills or knowledge in school or previous employment. Employees need both technical and soft skills. There may be times when you can find a class for an employee to take to build skills but managers should be capable and interested in direct mentoring both technical and soft skills.

Finally we get to execution. Execution will dictate company success. All of the other items discussed above are necessary but not sufficient to execute well. In addition, managers must monitor schedules, manage dependencies and troubleshoot issues. This is the day to day management of a team developing a project. You must not lose sight of this activity while doing planning for the next big thing. Managers should represent and be held accountable for his or her team's deliverables. Deliver with quality. Deliver ontime.

With enough managers capable of the above the tasks, your company can achieve its goals and success!

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How can you train managers on an ongoing basis?

You may ask your staff to accomplish a task like schedules, replan, review, or budgets and it does not get done. They make a commitment for a new date and it comes and goes without success. What should you do? Do you admonish them? Do you fire them? Do you train them? This entry concerns the last question.

Clearly it is unacceptable for your employees to miss delivery dates. Make sure they know they are accountable have to inform you early about potential misses. But you need to look at the root cause. Some employees may not have competence and you should manage them appropriately but others just have not been trained.

We know that most managers in engineering have not had management training. Part of your job as a manager is to train them. Take the time and have patience. Do not be surprised if employees with big titles are missing some key skills. Train them and they will not only be more productive but they will learn how to train their own staffs.

Here are the basics for a missed task:

• Set a new deadline for a task.
• Notify your employee that if they miss the new date, then you will work on it together.
• If they miss the task, call a meeting and allocate enough time to complete the task together.

I often use the term "lock the doors until it is done". Then you have to complete the task together. Like any other learning situation you have to be careful to not do the work yourself but you need to be in the room and guide the task until completion.

Once employees learn about this method, you can tell them they can ask for this help before they miss a deadline. Be open and generous in the process. If they feel like they are being punished, you may not get what you want out of the process.

You certainly should explore training classes for employees as a proactive tactic to minimize some of the need for this technique but you should still expect to do this kind of training.

Create a learning atmosphere and your team will learn how to succeed.

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Managers eat alone

When I was at Apple Computer I worked for Bruce Cleveland, most recently an executive at the former Siebel. He used the phrase in the title of this entry to describe the fact that when you become a manager, you can no longer be familiar with your employees. When I worked at Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy talked about a higher standard his managers needed to have both inside and outside Sun.

Here are some basics to think about:

• Your words are words of authority
• Stick with requirements
• You will be doing their performance reviews
• Your jokes might be taken personally

If you join a hallway discussion as a manager, many employees will take your words as direction. You might think you are only having a casual discussion and it might trigger a massive design change or schedule change before you know it. Make it clear that your team should continue on their plans. Make sure they know they are empowered to think and make decisions for themselves. Changes should be explicit, well thought out and not ad-hoc.

If you try and do your employee's jobs they will feel micromanaged and ineffective. As a manager, drive your agenda through requirements and not implementation. Implementation is your employee's job. Implementation is why they are in their jobs. You need to allow them creativity and provide them opportunities to think and grow so they can become bigger contributors later in their careers helping both you and your company or even the industry.

Remember that at sometime during the year you will write a performance review for your employees. If you and they behave as if you are only buddies, it can be a rude awakening. Familiarity can be misleading. It can make you slow to do the portion or your job where you have to be both critical and constructive. It is better to make the boundaries clear. You are their boss and will do the job in a professional and business-like manner. If you do not, you may be forced to change the relationship into a business-like one abruptly and that can turn the friendship sour.

Things you can say or discuss with a peer are trickier as a manager. If you tease an employee, they may consider it to be official criticism. If you gossip, it may be consider prejudiced or invasive. If you inquire, your employees may feel obligated to talk and feel uncomfortable. In both this and the previous paragraph it is easy to go too far and not be compassionate or human. The important thing is to be aware and unassuming.

Take your position thoughtfully and your employees will more likely take you with respect.

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How can you build camaraderie in your company?

We all want to work together well, right? While a good technical or business debate is essential in any endeavor, I believe companies accomplish more when employees work together well.

Here are some basics:

• Be clear about company and group direction
• Foster open dialog
• Respect
• Create shared experiences

It is hard to work together if you cannot agree on company direction or there are misunderstandings about company direction. Everyone in the company should be able to articulate the direction of the company -- maybe even make it a game at a company/group meeting taking turns saying the company direction and voting for the person(s) who does the best job at saying it. Clearly any divisiveness within your ranks will undermine camaraderie. Allow time for people to provide input, make timely decisions and get everyone to commit (even if they disagree). You should manage people who cannot commit appropriately.

You need to make sure people feel like they are part of the team. If employees have issues, good ideas or just information, they need ways to make them known. They need to feel that information will not be punished. You need to promote people sharing information and not keeping it close to the vest. Treat your employees like adults. Entrust them and charge them with keeping that trust. Encourage them to trust their fellow employees. Problems should be just things you solve together. Do not wait for your employees to come to you, you must engage them.

You must respect your team and you and your team must respect the rest of the company. Cynicism and sarcasm should be replaced by encouragement and suggestions and real problem solving. Set expectations with your team on respect and hold them accountable. Without respect, there is no camaraderie.

Finally, you must create shared experiences. These range from brainstorming some challenge, to working late together, to sharing meals. Shared experiences and shared challenges and ultimately shared accomplishments really make a team into a team. Acknowledge these events. Try and engage people who hang at the edges of these kind of groups (e.g. asking everyone's opinion in a room about some topic or decision).

Shared experiences are best when shared broadly. If one part of team has to work late to complete a project, it can help to have everyone work late including marketing and customer support. Clearly you have to balance this with people's schedules, when other employees had to last put in extra time, etc. The point is that it is good to find first-hand ways to understand what others are doing and to support them in any way possible including mere presence.

Set your intentions in this area and you can make a huge difference.

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How can you make positive changes in your organization?

Are you missing schedules? Do your engineers behave badly? Do you have poor quality in your products? Are you experiencing a lot of attrition? Are you having a hard time hiring? Do you want more innovation in your team?

It does not matter what kind of problems you are facing or changes you want to make, you can employ some of the same techniques to effect change. Here are some of the basics:

• Make sure both you and your employees understand why you want to make a change.
• Create a plan and declare your intentions.
• Allocate time each day or week to focus on the change including status, techniques, issues and successes.
• Figure out how to measure improvement and then measure it.
• Recognize success.

If your team understands the rationale for change, it will be easier for your team to adopt change. They do not have to agree with the rationale but they have to understand it. Make sure how this benefits the company and ultimately how it benefits them. Do not minimize this step. Take the time to have a discussion, acknowledge their viewpoints. This is where you build teamwork. This is where you get to say "we are all in this together". There is where motivation begins.

Make your intentions very clear. Do not be ambiguous. Solicit your team's help in creating a plan. Do not make it a choice thing. When you have a plan say "we are going to do x and and y and z ...". Make it a priority. Legitimize the time and don't assume your team can take on an important initiative without some tradeoffs.

The way you get something done is to spend some of your team's collective focus on it. Allocate time at each staff meeting to talk about the change or if it is a critical issue, meet each day. The act of taking time, speaking about it aloud has an effect.


If you do not measure something, you cannot improve it. Or at the every least, you cannot tell. There are lots of tools available to measure things that you might not think to be measurable. Industry tools like Six Sigma (TM) concentrate on techniques to measure things. It is easy to stop measuring along the way so pay attention and keep at it.

Finally, it is important to recognize success. Positive reinforcement. Rewards through remuneration or praise are important and will incent your employees to work on the next change you want to make.

So, go out and break some glass!

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How can you create trust between engineering and management?

The software development industry is very much like a dysfunctional family. Executives don't trust that engineering will deliver what they say they will deliver and they don't trust it will be on time. Engineers think that executives set unreasonable goals and don't provide them with the resources to succeed. What can you do to engender trust as a manager?

Here are some basics:

• Be feature agnostic
• Be completely open about schedules
• Give executives some choices
• Provide information early about risks and their mitigation
• Provide non-confrontational opportunities for executives to interact with engineering
• Be responsible

Many engineering managers get very passionate about what should be in the product. Passion is good but you must set a boundary for yourself. It is product management's job to take input from the field, engineering, and competition and set priorities. If you appear in the slightest to be sandbagging or subverting in order to push your own agenda, you will lose trust. If you are objective, it is easier to gain trust.

Give all of your information to anyone who wants to see it including schedules and designs. Hiding information reduces trust. If someone does not like the plans your team has developed, have an open discussion. Get down into details. Remove the mystery. It will be painful at first, but people will gain trust over time. If someone wants to argue about the length of time for a particular item, stand your ground. They hired you for your expertise and if they cannot allow you to do your job, your company will have big issues and trust may not be possible.

Make sure you provide alternatives. Consider the following alternatives:

• Existing resources, normal work schedules
• Existing resources with extra effort
• Extra resources
• Phasing features
• Modified release dates

The point is to not come into your boss and say "This is the only thing we can do". Everyone knows there are always choices. If management knows you have looked at the possibilities, It will build trust and confidence in you and your team.

Make sure you are the one informing your management when there are risks. Do not go in and expose a risk without some plan to mitigate that risk. When your boss hears things about your group from others before they hear it from you, it reduces their trust in you and your team.

If the only time your team interacts with management, is when something is going wrong, then it will be hard for you to trust each other. Find informational, social, research and other reasons to meet and build a relationship between you, your team and the executives.

Finally, try to make sure your team meets it commitments. If they can't, take responsibility and make sure that you and your team are working as hard as possible to make it up.

There is a lot more to this, but the above items are a good start.

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Employee Performance Reviews

You have to do them. You have to do them on time. You have to be honest and constructive.

There are a number of goals for reviews:

• Have better employees
• Make sure employees and managers understand each other's views on the employees performance
• Provide a basis for compensation and promotion purposes

The first goal of having better employees should be your primary goal. This is where you help employees understand areas in which they to improve and this is where you encourage good behavior that you want them to continue. This is where you document issues that may be a basis for managing unproductive employees from your company. This is where you help your company and the universe by telling your employees the truth.

I have had situations where employees have thanked me for being the first person who was honest with them. Some of those employees used these reviews as a turning point in their careers and in their lives.

Here are some basics for reviews:

• Keep reviews concise. It is easy to lose track of what is important in long reviews.
• Use examples. Do not bring up generalities. If you cannot find an example, skip the comment (good or bad).
• Get employee input. It is important to understand and discuss the difference in your perceptions about your employees performance.
• Get outside input. Make sure to understand whether an issue or strength is only recognized by you or is seen by others.
• Make sure that a review is not used as the first time you bring up an issue with an employee. You need to have regular discussions throughout the year.

Take reviews seriously. Remember when you were an individual contributor. Take care in producing them. Respect your employee by completing them on time. Reviews become the basis for discussions about compensation and promotions so they hit your employees in their pocket books. They also become a matter of self-esteem. Do not underestimate their impact.

Do valuable reviews. Make your team better.

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