What is management
The Open University suggest that management involves the following activities:
• organizing - making arrangements;
• staffing - selecting the right people for the job, for example;
• directing - giving instructions;
• monitoring - checking on progress;
• controlling - taking action to remedy hold-ups;
• innovating - coming up with new solutions;
representing - liaising with users etc.
Exercise 1.6 Paul Duggan is the manager of a software development section. On Tuesday at
10.00 am he and his fellow section heads have a meeting with their group manger about the staffing requirements for the coming year. Paul has already drafted a document 'bidding' for staff. This is based on the work planned for his section for the next year. The document is discussed at the meeting. At 2.00 pm Paul has a meeting with his senior staff about an important project his section is undertaking. One of the software development staff has just had a road accident and will be in hospital for some time. It is decided that the project can be kept on schedule by transferring another team member from less urgent work to this project. A temporary replacement is to be brought in to do the less urgent work but this might take a week or so to arrange. Paul has to phone both the personnel manager about getting a replacement and the user for whom the less urgent work is being done explaining why it is likely to be delayed.
Identify which of the eight management responsibilities listed above Paul was responding to at different points during his day.
The results of this survey by H. J. Thamhain and D. L. Wilemon appeared in June 1986 in Project Management Journal under the title 'Criteria for controlling software according to plan'.
Another way of looking at the management task is to ask managers what their most frequent challenges are. A survey of software project managers produced the following list:
• coping with resource constraints (83%);
• communicating effectively among task groups (80%);
• gaining commitment from team members (74%);
• establishing measurable milestones (70%);
• working out project plan agreement with their team (57%);
• gaining commitment from management (45%);
• managing vendors and sub-contractors (38%).
The percentages relate to the numbers of managers identifying each challenge. A manager could identify more than one.
Similar lists appear in the computer trade press, for example in the 27 August 1998 edition of Computing.
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