What are Engineering Management Skills?

1. What are Engineering Management Skills? • Engineering Management requires a combination of both technical skills and “soft skills.” • Technical skills: designing software, testing, writing code • Soft skills: team building, communicating, decision making, improving the skills of your team • Activities that are both: gathering requirements, planning • Other activities and skills Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

2. Soft Skills are a Foundation for successfully using the Technical Skills. • Developers are often given the job of manager based on their technical skills. • Attributes for managers • What makes a good manager? • Good leadership/just being loud? • Managers responsibilities • In broad terms what does a manager do? • Specific Skills • What skills are needed to be a successful manager? Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

3. What are the skills of someone you would work for? • What is important for the project? • What is important for you to work for them? • What is important for you to be successful? • What is success in your organization? Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

4. Attributes of Managers • Capable of evaluating risk and uncertainty • Being able to live with risk and uncertainty • Honesty and integrity • Understanding of personnel problems • Communicates clearly and completely • Alertness and quickness • Versatility Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

5. Attributes of Managers • Energy and toughness • If you have no energy then why expect your team to? • Decision-making ability • Pro-active • You can not wait to be told. • Cool headed • Know when to get mad. • Is being mad all the time effective? Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

6. Manager’s Responsibilities • Interface Management • Project Interfaces • Management Interfaces • Customer Interfaces • Information Flow • Resource Management • Time (schedule) • Manpower Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

7. Manager’s Responsibilities • Money • Facilities • Equipment • Information/Technology • Planning and Control • Reduced risks • Identification of alternatives • Resolution of conflicts • Running the project core team Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

8. Specific Skills for Managers • Team building • Getting team members committed • Clearly defining goals and objectives • Good working relationships • Being aware of the project’s culture • Planning skills • Conflict resolution Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

9. Specific Skills for Managers • Organizational skills • Entrepreneurial skills • Administrative skills • Resource allocation skills • Decision making skills • Technical skills Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

10. Specific Skills for Managers • Leadership • The process whereby one individual influences other group members toward the attainment of defined group or organizational goals. • Non-coercive influence • Coercive influence takes constant energy Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

11. Specific Skills for Managers • Leadership/Management • Leadership is where to go • Leadership motivates • Management is how to get there • Management implements Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

12. Useful Team Skills • There are many team skills, the following skills are useful across a broad range of activities. • Communicating • Team building • Facilitating • Making deccisions • Postmortems/Retrospectives • Principled Negotiation • Inspections • These skills will be practiced in team exercises through out the semester. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

13. Useful Team Skills • In Software Development and especially in the valley, lower level management’s role is often accomplished through influence and facilitation rather than direction. • Why? • Lack of formal procedures and policies. • Strong technical contributors, often more senior than management. • Many groups at the same level with conflicting priorities. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

14. Communications • Communication is critical to all management activities. • Tools for effective communications • Removing ambiguity • Resolving Cultural and Frame of Reference differences • The role of metrics in communications Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

15. Team Building • What is a team? • “A small number of people with complimentary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” • Identity, membership, roles and responsibilities • Clear vision, objectives and purpose • Management must make these clear if team members are to know what they are doing. • Allows teams to have some level of self direction. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

16. How Teams Function Using a Learning Cycle • Understand and frame the problem • Do not accept the problem at face value. • Look for root causes. • Plan • Challenge assumptions, decide on actions • Act • Follow the plan! • Reflect and Learn • What can we do better? • Involve the team in reflection Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

17. Team Building • What happens when there is no clear identity or direction? • Priority conflicts happen • Lack of focus • Easy to sit around and wait to be told what to do. • In some sense management’s goal should be to eliminate the need for management. • Self-organizing teams Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

18. FacilitatingGetting the Job Done • Facilitation is a useful skill in getting teams to meet objectives. • Facilitation gives guidance as required and is non-interfering. • Facilitating • Keep focus, single topic at a time, quality discussion • Everyone needs to know why they are there • Allow everyone to speak in a safe environment • Avoid name calling, excessive joking • Make good use of time • Avoid discussion loops, side tracking Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

19. Postmortems/Retrospectives • Postmortem, Latin for “after death” • Regardless of what it is called successful management learns form the past. • Being conscious of what you are doing and have done. • The facilitator’s role is to create a safe environment in which to get honest feedback. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

20. Postmortems/Retrospectives • Study both failures and successes • Define the purpose of the retrospective • Define success • Decide who should attend • Create a safe environment • Establish ground rules • Establish the timeline and mine it. • What actually happened and when. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

21. Postmortems/Retrospectives • What worked and what did not work. • Capture the data. • Determine what you are going to do about it. • Conducting a Retrospective and doing nothing about it is a pure waste of time and undermines any future retrospectives. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

22. Postmortems/Retrospectives • When we do not learn from our mistakes we are forced to repeat them. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

23. Reaching Decisions • An important skill is helping teams reach decisions. • Making progress without knowing the entire process. • Getting support for decisions. • Lack of a perfect plan. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

24. Principled Negotiation • Soft Negotiation • Searching for agreement • Avoiding conflict • True buy in? • Hard Negotiation • Looking for victory • Wanting to win • True buy in? Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

25. Principled Negotiation • Ensure that everyone understands everyone else’s objectives and positions. • Separate people from the problem. • Keep emotions out of the equation. • Develop win-win solutions. • Look for alternatives. • Use objective data • The need for metrics. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

26. Inspections • A method for improving both understanding and quality of all work products. • Inspections can be done at any stage of the development process. • Inspections are a formal/disciplined review of work products with set roles for those who participate. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

27. Benefits from Inspections • Detection of defects at an earlier stage • Finding defects at an earlier stage lowers the cost of correction. • Expanding the understanding of the code • This means we have multiple developers able to contribute to the improvement of the work product. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

28. Inspections • Inspection roles; moderator, reader, scribe, reviewers • Focus is on detecting flaws not correcting them on the spot. • Materials are reviewed individually before the inspection meeting. • This helps reduce both meeting time and group think. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

29. Inspections • During the inspection each line is read. • A disciplined approach is used to ensure everything in the work product is covered. • Flaws are corrected following the meeting. • Only those defects that will be corrected should be checked for during the inspection. Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008

30. Issues with Inspections • Detecting problems that never need to be corrected wastes effort. • Not following through • Picking at details • Inspecting too much • 80/20 rule • Solving problems rather than identifying them Computer Engineering 203 R Smith Management Skills 02/2008