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When You're the Boss of a Data Processing Department

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Every boss has a boss. At the very top is a boss called the customer.

The higher your position, the more subordinates you'll have, each looking to you for leadership and guidance upon which to help peg their career aspirations.

You'll look back and realize how little time has passed since you sent out your resumes and went through interviews with various levels of management. Now the tables are turned. Now, along with the technical expertise that has gotten you this far (coupled with the other requisites for success mentioned throughout this book)-you must manage.



Good DP management is not a seat-of-the-pants exercise. Effective management has been the focus of study for many years, and out of that ongoing analysis has come a massive catalogue of techniques and approaches that work.

But, while sound management techniques apply across the board in every area of business, the data processing field has added some new wrinkles. For instance, as business becomes more dependent upon computers, and the investment of time and money to program grows by leaps and bounds, the demands upon DP management to choreograph systems that will serve the end user is more important than ever before. Incorporating end-user needs with an MIS department requires delicacy, the consummate practice of politics, patience, tolerance of frustration, and, on top of those realities, a keenly honed ability to look ahead and anticipate changing needs. By the time a complicated system is developed and installed to support, for example, a large payroll department, the original stipulated specifications will have changed significantly. If it takes two years to implement such a system-and the two-year rule was a standard not too long ago - the system will be obsolete before it is up and running. This puts a particularly heavy burden on the DP manager, who must find ways to shorten the span between concept and operation.

In line with this, the evaluation of programs available from outside sources now takes up more and more of a DP manager's time. Available computer solutions to business problems are staggering in number. Are the payroll department's needs better served by hiring additional staff programmers, or are outside sources more cost-efficient and, in the long haul, will they better serve the needs of the department and the company? What about educating payroll to the inevitable reality that no system, whether developed in-house or outside, will precisely match every last demand of the department? Add to that the natural human resistance to large-scale change, particularly when it comes to having to learn a new technology, and the magnitude of the DP manager's role becomes obvious. Top management in a company tends to like things the way they were, and the DP manager - probably younger, and perhaps infatuated by the mystique and jargon of computers - comes up with ways to beat down that wall of resistance. This is important because not only must the system be installed and operating, but the people using it have to be positive enough to not sabotage it, through either neglect, lack of interest, or deliberate foot-dragging in accepting it.

It should be evident to you, particularly if you have had the opportunity to see various DP departments in action, that those who successfully manage computer operations have their hands full. So will you, once you reach that point in your career.

Before we discuss effective management techniques, let me again bring up the "Peter Principle." This expression was coined years ago to explain why so many talented people fall on their faces as they climb the success ladder in whatever industry or profession they have chosen to pursue. What happens, according to the principle, is that these people rise to their "level of incompetence." A brilliant and dedicated teacher becomes principal of a school and does a terrible job. Why? Being a good teacher doesn't necessarily translate into being a good administrator, with all its inherent political problems of dealing with school boards and PTAs, and having to manage other teachers. The same holds true for brilliant and dedicated project leaders, senior analysts, or software engineers who are elevated to a top management job that involves skills and interests far beyond the technical ones they are comfortable with. The fact is, there are people who should not be promoted beyond their "level of competence," because they are doomed to failure.

As you forge ahead in your career as a data processor, it would be wise to keep looking into yourself, as I've suggested you do from the very beginning, and try to establish in your own mind your level of incompetence. For you, dealing with short-term problem-solving as a project leader might be exactly the niche in which you function best. To accept a promotion to DP manager could plunge you into another whole world in which you're unhappy and, because of this, will not make best use of your talents.

Then again, your personality and interests might make you the perfect candidate for eventual promotion to your company's top data processing management position, or even eventually to the presidency of the company itself. Take the time to know yourself; your happiness over the course of many years is at stake.
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