why managers...

CPU’s now run at millions of instructions per second. Size of primary memory has increased manifold. New tools, IDE’s have arrived to reduce the involved human effort. But still, IT projects go on as if eternity has their names written on it. IT projects are no longer as much about the technology as they are about people. When it comes to an IT project - people plan, execute, control and hang around without any purpose. People are the primary bottlenecks in a project which keeps overshooting the planned schedule.

Someone overslept in the morning, did not take bath, missed the bus to office, did not have proper breakfast, someone got late because she had to drop her kid (even worse kids) to the school, someone is struggling with the extra alcohol of previous night – and they are supposed to balance another important aspect of their lives – work. No doubt when there is a conflict between work and non-work life, non-work life takes precedence in most of the cases and consequently work suffers. In a way, people don’t suffer as much because of work as work suffers because of people.

People have now become the most conspicuous bottlenecks in the projects. Interdependency of a project upon different teams, different groups and different skills has gradually distorted the uniformity and smoothness of operations. Coordination between such islands of information/operations remains a challenge. Understanding the goals of every group is a challenge in itself and it represents most of the time actually spent during the project.

There comes the need of a charming handsome gentleman or a beautiful articulate lady to smooth the edges and bridge the gap between the otherwise isolated islands. There is a saying in Chinese that ‘if you don’t have a smiling face, don’t open a shop’ which can be rephrased for the present times as ‘if you don’t have a smiling face, don’t even think of becoming a manager’.