I have had the privilege to work across few different companies in the last few years. Most of the companies where located in India. And this series of blog posts is aimed at IT companies in India only.
In one of the companies I was working for a manager. I was previously working for a different team and had recently completed a project and had been allocated under the new manager.
I worked on a couple of tasks for a week under him and after which he told me, even after two weeks of hard work there is nothing which is achieved. There is no progress on this front. It pretty sad he said. Honestly speaking I felt offended. I had tried to do some work that too hard work within a short span of time. All of which failed.
But instead of finding what went wrong, I was at the receiving end, thats no surprise you get when you work for a NON Technical Manager. Its like a leading a team of mechanics without even knowing basics of mechanics.
So I left the manager say his thing and for the next 3 weeks did no work, just pretended that I was busy.
The manager took leads into this particular task of evaluating something for the next three weeks. At the end of three weeks, he too was not able to prove anything. He raised his hands saying " WE CANNOT DECIDE ".
He also said. " If I cannot decide after 3 weeks NO ONE else CAN decide " which sounds absolutely ridiculous.
So he called for a meeting, and went to the basics and started asking us about our opinions and what are the criteria we are evaluating against. But the criteria itself was not clear. He again asked who sets the criteria.
Well atleast none of the developers set the criteria. It has to be some guy who is the end user or manager I feel. Now since nobody was taking responsibility for defining requirements, owning the evaluation criteria the non technical manager just raised his hands and said we need to put an end to the task.
What a sad way to end a stupid task. But when I analyzed, the whole thing we did for a month and half was nothing but bullshit.
When there are no clear cut requirements why should we take up the task.?
If the manager says there is no one to define the requirements, its upto the manager to set the stage, arrange for a minimum set of requirements He should get hold of the stake holders to get a bare minimum set of criteria as to what the end users are looking for. After all he is being paid to get the project on track. If the project manager himself does not know his responsibilities, what is the point paying him such a hefty sum of money ? (Or is he aware of his responsibilities and just absconding ?)
Without this how can we dive into the task. But these non technical managers are in their own world. They want huge salary but hate to take even a single bit of responsibility.
Yes they hate their responsibilities, which seem beyond their intellect. Failing in their responsibility might lead to the loss of job (which they think), which would put a big cut in the monthly EMI which they are paying for the newly purchased big FLAT.
So finally who is responsible ? Its got to be the managers, if you do not put goal posts within a football stadium a player will be simply be kicking the ball.. yes but where and what is the ultimate destination, is unknown..
cheers,
In one of the companies I was working for a manager. I was previously working for a different team and had recently completed a project and had been allocated under the new manager.
I worked on a couple of tasks for a week under him and after which he told me, even after two weeks of hard work there is nothing which is achieved. There is no progress on this front. It pretty sad he said. Honestly speaking I felt offended. I had tried to do some work that too hard work within a short span of time. All of which failed.
But instead of finding what went wrong, I was at the receiving end, thats no surprise you get when you work for a NON Technical Manager. Its like a leading a team of mechanics without even knowing basics of mechanics.
So I left the manager say his thing and for the next 3 weeks did no work, just pretended that I was busy.
The manager took leads into this particular task of evaluating something for the next three weeks. At the end of three weeks, he too was not able to prove anything. He raised his hands saying " WE CANNOT DECIDE ".
He also said. " If I cannot decide after 3 weeks NO ONE else CAN decide " which sounds absolutely ridiculous.
So he called for a meeting, and went to the basics and started asking us about our opinions and what are the criteria we are evaluating against. But the criteria itself was not clear. He again asked who sets the criteria.
Well atleast none of the developers set the criteria. It has to be some guy who is the end user or manager I feel. Now since nobody was taking responsibility for defining requirements, owning the evaluation criteria the non technical manager just raised his hands and said we need to put an end to the task.
What a sad way to end a stupid task. But when I analyzed, the whole thing we did for a month and half was nothing but bullshit.
When there are no clear cut requirements why should we take up the task.?
If the manager says there is no one to define the requirements, its upto the manager to set the stage, arrange for a minimum set of requirements He should get hold of the stake holders to get a bare minimum set of criteria as to what the end users are looking for. After all he is being paid to get the project on track. If the project manager himself does not know his responsibilities, what is the point paying him such a hefty sum of money ? (Or is he aware of his responsibilities and just absconding ?)
Without this how can we dive into the task. But these non technical managers are in their own world. They want huge salary but hate to take even a single bit of responsibility.
Yes they hate their responsibilities, which seem beyond their intellect. Failing in their responsibility might lead to the loss of job (which they think), which would put a big cut in the monthly EMI which they are paying for the newly purchased big FLAT.
So finally who is responsible ? Its got to be the managers, if you do not put goal posts within a football stadium a player will be simply be kicking the ball.. yes but where and what is the ultimate destination, is unknown..
cheers,
