Enhancing Management Using Your Technical Toolset

In this chapter, I’ll cover how the various tools in your technical toolset enhance your ability to manage projects and programs. I’ve discussed each of the key management areas in the first two parts of this book through various lenses and have touched on challenges you face in the technical space. Next, I talked about the technical toolset, which consists of code expectations, system design, and architecture landscape design. Now, we’ll cover each of these intersections of the technical toolset and the key management areas and, lastly, explore how the toolset will also help you be a better leader in your organization.

We’ll explore how to enhance management with the technical toolset by doing the following:

• Driving toward clarity
• Resolving conflicts
• Delivering through leadership

Let’s dive in!

Driving toward clarity

A TPM is an extension of a program manager and, as such, it shares the trait of driving toward clarity. However, our technical toolset allows us to use specialized tools to tackle technical problems that would leave a non-technical PM struggling to process them. We speak the same language – quite literally – as the people who are delivering the project and can bridge the gap between technical jargon and the business. I’ve talked about driving clarity in various stages of a project and have discussed the technical tools TPMs use. Now, let’s see how these two concepts help each other. I’ll go through each key management area, from planning through risk management and stakeholders and communications.

Planning

During the planning stage, all three technical skills I’ve discussed are used. We’ll go through each of the technical skills across three steps in the planning process: requirements analysis, project plan...

Resolving conflicts

Conflict resolution is one of the key methods by which we find a path forward as many issues are rooted in disagreement or misunderstanding between multiple parties. As such, any place where a TPM can run into an issue, conflict resolution can make an appearance.

Planning

Conflicts during the planning phase usually occur while analyzing requirements but can also occur while creating the project plan. We’ll go through a few examples and see how your technical background can help resolve these conflicts.

During requirement analysis, disagreement on a requirement or an ambiguous requirement is common. As you work with your stakeholders, any clarification may introduce new complexities or insights and can steer the conversation organically. I have found that knowing my system behaviors and complexities helps during these conversations.

For instance, a recent project had a requirement to take a regional functionality and make it available globally...

Delivering through leadership

As a TPM, you are a leader in your organization. You effect change through your programs and projects, but also as a contributor to the technical direction and strategies of your team. You identify problems but you also resolve them. Here are the ways in which your technical toolset helps you deliver through leadership.

As a leader, you will be expected to define the direction of your team. This expectation grows the higher up you go as a TPM. To do this, you are expected to find issues and define and drive solutions to fix them. This can be a difficult move for some who prefer to work within the bounds of a specific problem. However, defining a problem and solution within the confines of a project is similar to the confines of a team or organization. Just as a project has a goal, a team or organization has a charter. The most reliable way to find a problem worth fixing is to look at repeatable efforts across projects and recurring pain points during...

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed how your technical toolset can help enhance your project management by examining the key management areas of planning, risk management, and stakeholder management and communication. We looked at each of these in terms of driving clarity, resolving conflicts, and delivering through leadership.

Across all aspects of project management, a TPM’s technical toolset allows for quicker, more efficient execution by providing foundational context and knowledge in the problem space. The toolset also enhances the TPM’s leadership by effecting change in the technical direction of their organization.

A TPM is both a PM and a technical expert, and they are greater than the sum of their parts, as the old saying goes. It is the joining of the project and program management skills with technical acumen that acts as a force multiplier and allows the TPM to do their job better than a subject matter expert or a PM alone.