Essential Skills for Managers of Technical Professionals

1-day Workshop

Course Description

It isn’t the case that “If you can manage one thing, you can manage anything” – not where technology is concerned. Technology professionals (e.g., programmers, database specialists, hardware/software engineers) are a special breed: often loners, unique in their love of problem-solving and their seeming devotion to the hardware and software they sustain.  Leading these individuals presents new challenges for managers who need to understand the strengths and preferences of those they lead, and to be prepared to shore up their weaker points.  Managers of “techies” need to ensure:

• Successful teamwork and team interactions, as well as the individual contribution that “techies” often prefer;

• Effective person-to-person – as well as man-to-machine – interaction;

• Constructive communications with less technical people (internal and external customers, suppliers) despite techies’ impatience with the uninitiated.

Similarly, managers of techies need to understand their own unique role in supporting the technical workforce, like:

• Knowing and providing the resources techies need to do their jobs well (“space” and time among them);

• Organizing the work of others to maximize effectiveness in a tech organization;

• Helping these objective, logical thinkers live with ambiguity that is often the day-to-day reality in organizations.

This course uses a combination of lecture (with active question and answer throughout), case studies and role-playing. Students and instructors examine activities common to technology organizations (collaborative design work, peer reviews, developing documentation, participating on project teams) in light of some common characteristics often found among technology professionals. Case studies examine real-life examples of attempted process improvements and challenges encountered. Groups debrief, analyze “what went wrong” and then examine the actual outcomes (some successful, some not).

Instructors: Susan de la Vergne and Gary C. Hinkle

Course Outline

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