OK'now that I've drilled the Lazy Manager into your over-stuffed brains, I want to introduce you to a new friend ' the Dumb Manager.
Similar to the dumb programmer, the dumb manager must admit that she doesn't know everything so that she'll continue to learn and question her work. As a software development manager, the Dumb Manager is in a tough position. She can't become an expert in every technical subject under the sun, but she has to be able to evaluate skillsets that pertain to every technical subject under the sun. She has to recommend developers for different jobs even though she may have never performed the job herself. She has to talk intelligently about technical applications even though she hasn't seen a single line of code that made up the application.
Basically, she has to work her ass off to stay up-to-date. If she thinks that she knows it all and can rely on her 'technical background', she's got another thing coming.
Of course, the Dumb Manager probably doesn't have a photographic memory and most certainly is not omnipotent. So how does she manage to stay current on these topics without these god-like traits'
Actually, it's quite easy. The world of blogs has made it much easier for Dumb Managers to thrive. And trust me ' that's a good thing.
In the old days (i.e. before 2004), a Dumb Manager had to have an extensive list of websites that they visited. They would visit these websites every day to see if a new article was posted.
For me, that list of websites included 4GuysFromRolla, 15Seconds and ASPToday (before they went to the subscription model) in addition to a dozen others. I can't tell you how much of a pain it was to go to these websites every single day. In addition, the process was labour intensive. The number of sites that I could visit was limited by how much time I could allocate in the day.
That all changed when I was introduced to blogs. More specifically, the RSS feeds that syndicate the blog's content. If you're new to the world of blogs and RSS feeds, check out the wikipedia entries here and here.
Reading blogs can be a double-edged sword ' it helps you to keep on top of the latest trends but it can take up a significant amount of time. The Dumb Manager needs to have a good system for weeding out items that will take up too much time. When I was developing code for a living, I would look at an article full of code and love it. As a manager that is striving to become as Dumb as possible (no jokes Don), I have to skip over these articles because they just take too much time. Besides, the Dumb Manager's focus has to be on the concepts rather than on the implementation.
I guess the bottom line with being a Dumb Manager is that you always have to be ahead of your developers. Like anything in life, your ability to do that is going to ebb and flow. In areas where your knowledge is lacking (i.e. you're truly dumb), you'd better hope that you've been Lazy and created some experts that you can delegate to.
At this point, I'm hoping that you understand why it's important for me as a software development manager to be both Lazy and Dumb. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll add some posts that describe why I also need to be Incompetent and Forgetful.