How to become a good Manager?

I think many will agree that we have many good IT professionals. And even our education, political, economic and other factors not much can prevent IT to become a good specialist if you wish. But with managers in the field of IT not so good...

Under the IT managers I mean timido, project managers, Directors, scrum masters, line managers, etc. With senior management of the case look better, as they are either send from abroad, or they are representatives of rare species of managers, technicians, who sometimes are found in the wild IT environment.

What properties should a good Manager possess? First, he must be able to communicate with different people and to lead them. Secondly, to be well versed in related fields of psychology, Economics, law, deal with such issues as motivation, moral hazard, risk assessment, supply-demand, employment law, international law, intellectual property.

These items are nominally taught in technical universities, but their quantity and quality tend to zero. Thus, University education does not solve the issue of education for IT managers.

So where to take for IT managers? Related areas managers do not take — they simply did not have enough qualifications.

The only option is to grow managers from developers. But this has several problems, one of which — need to change the mindset.

Managers and programmers have a very important difference in thinking: the programmer focuses on the process — it is important to create refined architecture, to write the perfect code with comments, to come up with a clever plugin system and write a new (or favorite) technologies. The Manager, in turn, focuses (should focus) on the result — the finished product in the specified time and budget. The beauty of the code comes second (I would even say, on the penultimate) plan. Because this discrepancy is not a rare problem between managers and developers.

The problem is that to change the thinking of the day or week is impossible. According to expert estimates, the process of transformation of thinking takes from six months to four years.

And here lies one of the main problems. The average length of the IT specialist in one company 1.5-2 years. Therefore, the company can be almost 100% sure that the developer will not work in their company, when will the process of learning. Thus, there is no sense to start to teach him...

The second problem is that rare developer will look ahead for 3-4 years and will plan their managerial future... without external interference. Unfortunately, HR is more concerned about how to sahantie another javista and purchase a new batch of cookies to at least these didn't.

You also need to remember that a good Manager can be a not everyone a techie. Scheme "today is the best developer, tomorrow will be a good Manager" is not working. You can lose a good developer and get a bad Manager. The economic effect from this should not even start to count.

The best time to start the transformation developer Manager — middle level. At this time you need to begin to read specialized literature (not just literature on technology). Best to start with Peopleware Timothy Lester and "Joel about programming" by Joel Spolsky. And further down the list.

The Manager's job is based on managing people. The problem is the following: to become a good IT specialist, you need only computer, Internet and desire; a good Manager without practice be unlikely to succeed.

Another point that many miss out. In all situations for everything that happens in the team, the responsibility should be borne by Manager (supervisor).

I repeat: in all schools, the team will have to meet the Manager.

In the age of scrum and agile methodologies responsibility is spread among team members, managers and the customer, there is no personal responsibility. No need to say that this is very beneficial to companies and their developers.

Life example: once asked his Manager who will take responsibility for the unrealistic estimation, lack of qualified personnel and implemented a management methodology called shimna. That got a surprised answer: everything. When personal responsibility for their work nothing like that whatsoever. I don't need to say that project failed miserably, and no one suffered personal punishment.

To understand and take personal responsibility for themselves and their subordinates is one of the most important properties of a good Manager.

By the way, there is another side-effect: because, for lack of a better word, stupid managers some normal experts change jobs, and some are starting to lean toward the idea that it is better to work without managers (articles on similar topics can be easily found on the Internet).

Not far to seek: in one company I and my colleagues within a few months she hid the real situation from the Manager that he did not give God does not intervene in the development process and not wasted all that without him it worked perfectly fine.

Several times watched a situation when the managers after a while abandoned their posts and turned back to developers.There are several reasons: salary growth, as a rule, is insignificant (if at all), and responsibilities and headaches are an order of magnitude greater.

In addition, a situation where a developer earns more than his manager is not uncommon in IT companies, although this happens very rarely in other areas. This can also explain the reluctance of many techies to turn into managers.

The manager must have charisma, have a huge amount of knowledge, be authority for his subordinates. All this needs to be multiplied by technical knowledge. Do such people already work for you? Your task is to do everything so that your competitors do not get them.

And developers need to answer themselves in advance the question of whether they want to become managers in the future, and if the answer is yes, start preparing for it in a few years.