This morning, I caught myself looking back at the last week of meetings, e-mails, and conference calls, and I experienced a minor epiphany. If I published a detailed diary of the ebb & flow of proposals, debates, and commitments from the past few days, I could successfully deflate the management aspirations of 80-90% of the technical folks I know. Contrary to what many might think, there's not much IT in IT Management.
Ok, that's a bit of an overstatement; I couldn't do this job effectively without a solid grounding in the technology under discussion. However, I expect anyone with a similar role (intermediary / facilitator between business and IT) would agree that it goes well beyond compilers, load balancers, and user interfaces. We talk about fundamental business process, not just specific IT projects. When presented with new ideas/approaches, we question some previous decisions while reaffirming others. We use the simple calculus of cost-benefit to make the call between multiple options; the magic is in defining the problem clearly, identifying the costs accurately, and enumerating the benefits fairly & impassionately. (Revenues will increase or costs will decrease, and you'll see it on the bottom line by the end of Month X).
For every organization I've worked with, those conversations are never black-and-white, always shades of gray. Here's a scattered sampling from the week ...
There has been little or no "classic IT" in any of these conversations. No mention of program requirements, data flows, system throughput, database tuning, etc. There is strong business focus, but just as much effort is expended simply in making sure estamos en la misma jugada - we're all on the same page.
This is a consistent modus operandi in all of the companies I've worked with; I don't think it's unique to any company in the more traditional industries, although I would assume high-tech or consulting firms might approach things differently. And, I'm fairly confident that this is why many died-in-the-wool technical folks have little interest in upper management. It's all about semantics, gray areas, and wading through varying levels of understanding to find those nuggets of truth that everyone can line up behind. Its not about winning arguments - it's all about bringing groups of people to the same place as quickly as possible, but doing it without forced acquiescence. Compromise and collaboration will do wonders for commitment when the project hits a rough patch.
This process drives most people in IT nuts - and its not just those with aspirations to upper management. There are plenty of IT groups in corporate America, just chomping at the bit to get something accomplished, to get under way and start delivering real benefits. All of this debating and restating and reformatting appears as an overdeveloped sense of conservatism and an unwillingness to make change. Just make the decision and get out of my way - I'd be done already if you'd just pull the trigger ...
As far as I'm concerned, however, this is where the real fun of IT is. Understanding - really understanding - the problem and the path to the solution is great; helping other people come to that same understanding is really a kick. Catching that glint in their eye when they've taken ownership - they know they're driving a project that delivers big-time benefits - I dig it. It's like the toughest programming problems - the brilliant architecture hinges on one critical hack, and I'm the one who discovers the solution.
It beats working for a living!