Managing effective IT teams
Team management is a challenge for any company. In most cases, managers need to combine technical and personal skills to effectively coordinate their teams. Besides, it is also necessary to develop strategic approaches for success. What happens is that, in practice, there is no one ideal management model — since different teams, companies and markets require specific management strategies.
In the case of IT organizations, managers must deal with highly qualified professionals, that need to be grouped according to their expertise. Because of this, team management in this area is more complex: it requires maximum technical qualification, and the ability on the part of the manager, to deal simultaneously with conflicts and demands. Do you want to know more tips for effective management of IT teams? Check out our post right now and find out!
Management approach
In order to manage an IT team, managers need to basically keep in mind two types of approach. The first of these is the strategic approach, in which the manager needs to consider the group and the company broadly. This means that, from this approach, a long-term view of the team will be developed, with goals, objectives, and expected behaviors. The second is the tactical approach, which involves a daily view of the IT team, in which feedback occurs in a more informal way on a daily basis inside the company.
These two approaches, however, are complementary: managers must, at the same time, define which are the ways that their teams need to go through in the long run — planning from the strategic approach — and, on a daily basis, must be able to provide feedback whenever necessary — conducting monitoring from the tactical approach.
In addition to defining what will be the approach or approaches, it is necessary to communicate it properly. This way, besides ensuring the understanding of the whole team, the professionals who are led will have the confidence that there is a path to be followed with validation checkpoints or revalidation of the process. Including points of co-participation of the team or of some key members is also important to motivate the team.
Solid processes or agile methodologies?
Agile methodologies have become tendency for most companies, especially software development ones, which need a faster response for feedbacks and process validation to avoid projects that do not conform the expectations of both the clients and the company itself.
However … it is not all rosy. The “starting up” process of the companies is not a reality for most companies with very large and highly complex structures. The trend is a trend to mix already consolidated practices of organizing teams with new forms of organization, such as the agile methodologies such as SCRUM or XP, for example.
Important points
There are three things every manager needs to keep in mind during the management of their teams. The first one is simple: they need to show they are available. It is crucial that the team knows it can rely on the manager to clarify any doubts. The second point is to create a methodology. After elaborating your planning, the manager must make it clear to each of one in their team which points will be evaluated, what is expected of their work and how to evaluate the results. Finally, the third point is that every manager needs to show commitment. Thus, it is crucial that managers carry out meetings to receive feedbacks from the teams and adopt a hands-on attitude whenever necessary.
Management tools
Finally, a very important point in any IT company is the optimization of the work through tools that assist productivity growth, organize processes and increase the synergy between the different areas of the company. In our experience developing solutions for IT governance and monitoring complex infrastructures, we have realized that the definition of indicators for monitoring of results is an important factor for any IT team.
With OpMon Dashboards, our customers can share visual panels between their teams and even with other areas for increasing transparency of business-critical processes. However, before this visualization it is vital to plan what are the metrics that will contribute to increase IT’s efficiency, as well as the communication with your team. All coming from the strategic approach mentioned earlier.
