Define to others when corporate values must take precedence over geeky values

Not being interested in business, many developers tend to ignore necessities like deadlines. Many become skilled at dodging them even if by thier subconscious. The problem isn’t that most developers can’t be trusted to work responsibly by themselves, so much as the fact that they can be almost guaranteed to tinker as much as the schedule allows. In such cases, for all that successful management of super-geeks means understanding their culture, it also means recognizing when moving to achieve corporate goals are more important. At times, understanding needs to take second place to necessity, even at the cost of resentment toward the PM. Skilled project managers minimize conflicts with their staff, but they also recognize that some conflicts are unavoidable. Like I told my wife jokingly this evening at dinner it’s lke an iron fist in a pink fuzzy glove…

Culmination of tonights rant

Managing programmers — especially LAMP/FOSS ones — is an extreme version of the balancing act that any manager must do. On the one hand, managers need to understand the culture of their departments and how to work within them. Being new to my current Team it is hard to establish respect in the identification of the leadership role over ‘veterans of the Matix’. On the other, I am maintaining a liasion role as an outreach and intermediary between that culture and the rest of the company which requires answers from us. Combining these goals means adjusting my concept of management for the department. I explained that to my upline this afternoon. Sometimes, it means interpreting programmers to non-programmers in CS, or shielding programmers from the misunderstanding of executives in order to achieve corporate goals. These are hard fought battles that the programmers may never catch wind of, but a good PM must wage these battle fronts for the betterment and sustainability of thier department especially during the closure of a deadline. At other times, it means awakening programmers to the larger goals of the company. My point is it’s all a precarious balance act, but knowing what to expect as you go into a new position (3 weeks now) can leave you with more time to handle the challenges that arise without being distracted by cleaning up your mistakes or engendering a lack of cooperation from your team.