A Manager's Most Important Function

December 13, 2016 - management

Understanding A Manager’s Output

It took a few quarters during my transition from Individual Contributor (IC) to Manager to realize the extent to which the team’s output was intertwined with my output.

At first, I had a difficult time letting go of my IC work; there is a certain level of satisfaction associated with solving problems and shipping solutions. I also battled a sense guilt - a feeling that I wasn’t contributing on the same level as the rest of the team. It was only over the course of a few months that I started to realize that the more IC work I did, the less effective the team was.

It wasn’t until I learned to let go of that work and focus on being a facilitator for the team, that we began to hit our stride.

Most Important Aspects Of Eng Management

I’ve had time to reflect on that shift in mindset and wanted to share my thoughts on the most effective areas a technical manager should be spending their time.

Enabling The Team

The most important aspect of being a technical manager (or any manager for that matter) is doing everything in your power to make the team move fast. This includes things like facilitating for them, moving blockers out of their way, and working with them to both identify and remove technical debt whenever possible.

Of the upmost importance is ensuring they have clear context around their work. For example, if one of your developers is squashing a small bug for your Success Team, remind them how much time it will save their colleagues; remind them that a bug-free workflow contributes to positive moral both inside and outside of the team; try to provide a broader context that connects the problems they are solving to the impact those solutions have to the organization.

Managing For Happiness

I constantly try to reflect on the following questions:

  • Does my team feel supported?
  • Do they have a process that works for them?
  • Do they understand how the things they’re building connect to the rest of the business?
  • Do they have faith in each other?
  • Do they have faith in me?
  • Are they connected to each other?
  • Do they have a set of shared values around team expectations?

The answers to each of these questions provides incredible, honest insight into team moral. Its wholly appropriate to ask these questions of yourself. Its even better to get feedback from your team itself; useful tools to help you tease out answers are 1:1s, retrospectives and postmortems.

Team Development

Another important aspect of solid technical leadership is ensuring your team is consistently growing in scope and responsibility. This includes securing the requisite tools they need to develop themselves, such as:

It also means fighting to make sure they are aptly compensated and ensuring they understand and are bought into the career path that they have collaborated on with you.

This post is broken up into two parts. The second post, with extended thoughts on what I believe to be quintessential aspects of good technical management can be found here.