Core content of technical management-improving team skills

I recently talked with my colleagues about technical management from the software quality assurance methodology. What is the connotation of technology management? In this article, we will make a small summary and make an appropriate extension.

 

Technical Management gives people the feeling that workload evaluation, project planning, project progress tracking, and so on, but this is only part of the technical management work. In general, technical management can be divided into two latitudes, as shown in 1.

 Figure 1

 

One of the dimensions is project management, including project planning, risk management, and budget management. For grass-roots technical managers, more content is involved in workload evaluation, project planning, project progress management, and so on. The visibility of this latitude is very strong, and it is easy to make the superiors "nervous" if it is not done well. Therefore, each item has a special training course.

 

Another dimension is team management. Nowadays, software companies adopt human resource management in a straight line, that is, technical managers must take on some human resource management work, such as performance management and career development planning. Of course, these content gives people a feeling of being "very imaginary ". Because of this, there is much less focus on team management and fewer training courses.

 

It is believed that many people refer to technical management more as project management. In management activities, there seems to be only risks, plans and timelines, while training teams are ignored. In Figure 2, there are two points and one ray, in which point a represents the weight of Team A for technical management at two latitudes. Similarly, point B represents Team B. It can be intuitively seen that Team A focuses more on team management, while Team B focuses more on project management. In addition, the radiation in the figure indicates that if the team weight is distributed online or nearby, the team has a good balance between team management and project management in technical management.

 

Figure 2

The distribution of the weights of two dimensions in Team Technical Management in Figure 2 may not remain unchanged and the focus should be adjusted according to different periods. However, team management should be the core content of technical management, Or, further, improving team skills is the core topic of technical management.

 

Team management should not only go out for dinner and do team building or something, but more importantly, improve team skills. Many problems in project management can be solved by improving the skills of the team. For example, why are we so persistent in Risk Management (Content in project management? This is because the team's ability is insufficient to cope with the challenges it faces! Of course, the author does not want to say that risk management is not required when the team's skills go up, but that when the skills are enhanced, the risk control is naturally strong, the requirements for risk management will be relaxed. If the team's skills do not go up, the project management work will only get tired and work on the surface of the problem.

 

Improving team skills is a very difficult topic because it is reasonable but difficult to operate. However, in any case, technical managers should first have this awareness, because only consciousness can take actions first. In reality, there are many phenomena. The technical manager said, "My boss doesn't care about the cultivation of team skills. He only cares about himself, because the improvement of team ability is not his primary responsibility, he only asked me to make the product as planned. No matter what the boss does, I will be unable to manage it, and I will not be given time to do it ." There are several problems with this excuse:

 

1) if the product is completed as planned, the project is successful, but it does not mean that the product is successful. A team with poor skills can develop products and projects, but the products must not be successful. As soon as the product is released, it may be "fire-fighting for all.

 

2) If managers at each level use such an excuse, the final result is that no one cares about the cultivation of team skills. Why does an enterprise need technical managers? Just to make excuses for them? Apparently not. Among all managers from top to bottom, there must be a level of attention to the cultivation of team skills, which can only be a grassroots technical manager. The first victim of insufficient team skills is the team itself, and the grass-roots technical managers are here. Some grassrootsTechnologyManager's mainWorkIt is schedule and instructions from superiors, ignoring the cultivation of team skills, which is actually a kind of numbness that ignores their own interests. The ability of technical managers to gradually improve their team skills may be a key indicator to evaluate their superior and mediocre management capabilities.

 

3) The primary key to improving team skills is not time issues, but awareness. There will always be time, because projects always need to be done. However, after being conscious, the same job will adopt totally different strategies, and the Team will learn more from them.

 

In addition to raising the awareness of team skills, technical managers must pay more attention to the use of methodologies and create methodologies suitable for the team. In addition, assuming certain responsibilities and appropriate risks can help engineers increase their skills.