Management VS Leadership in Software Organizations

Introduction

In order to of achieve a predefined goal by an organization, it must not only have enough resources but also the way of using them effectively. Formally a manager, informally a leader has to have the capabilities in him to use his resources such as human, financial, physical and informational. As the management of human resources is always been critical to the success of any organization, that resources are always being given a greater importance throughout the whole path of achieving a goal or whole process of successful completion of a project. This report describes how to prepare every member for a project and the whole team a cohesive high performance team in a given situation.
Management

Management is not only controlling people and managing assets within an organization. The definition of management has been changed with the race of time and necessity. A good manager needs to have some special qualities. He has to be creative, analytical, effective goal oriented, a good planner, communicative, etc. Different experts and scholars have defined management from different view point based on different features. Some have defined it as “art of getting things done” [1].

Management is the process of conducting a set of functions which includes planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling in order to achieve a predefined goal effectively and efficiently [1].

Leadership

Leadership capability in a person is rarely found by born. It can be build with practices. A leader has to be dynamic and innovative. Leader is not to administrate, he is to motivate, encourage and define the goal clearly to the fellow members.

According to William J. Rothwell and H. C. Kazanas Leadership is defined as directing the activities of a group toward a shared goal, the process of activities of an organized group towards goal achievement and the ability to go beyond traditional culture in order to start more adaptive evolutionary change process [2].
According to Prof. Dave Ulrich, University of Michigan and consultants Jack Zenger and Norman Smallwood in “Results-Based Leadership”, leaders who are not getting result are not truly leading [3]. This means leadership is more related to result. A true leader will get result at the end. Bringing the example of the former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam under consideration, we observe that a good leader always takes the responsibility of a failure and all the credits of the success is given to the whole team [4]. This is the quality of a good leader.

Management VS. Leadership

Management and Leadership vary from situation to situation. Management functions can be described as planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting [5].

A good software development organization must write their software processes [6]. Out of the functions stated above a software project manager need to plan the whole process, organize the team and resources, employee new IT person if needed, break down the tasks, analyze the risks, find out the ways how to resolve those and direct how to accomplish those, prepare a daily report based on the status and also plan the budget. Beside those formal tasks a project manager has to do something more out of this boundary. He has to motivate team members, ensures the learning curves of the team is upward, maintains a good chemistry inside the team, resolves the conflicts which occur sometimes, and finally ensures the result through building an effective team and also prepare the team ready for future challenges.

The success of an organization mostly depends on the activities and performances of the managers. An effective software organization focuses on the quality of its products, customer’s satisfactions, responds quickly to environment changes. The organization should be innovative. The organization should try to bring out the best output from the employees. And here lies the main challenges of a good manager where he needs to show her creativity and skills as a good leader. A leader drives his team to right direction and encourages the team to achieve the top result. The result is nothing but the best quality output. A good leader concentrates on the how the knowledge is being shared, increased, how the team members are performing, what could be reason of bad performances, how to solve those, how to keep the environment comfortable for the members. An organization should try to store its knowledge intelligently so that the absence of a person does not affect the organization [7].

A manager is administrative where a leader is innovative, a manager is imitate where a leader is originate, a manager maintains and manages but a leader develops, a manages focuses on the processes and systems where a leader focuses on the people, a manager tries to control but a leader inspires the team members, manager does the things right and leader does the right things.

Leading a Team

Leadership style and approaches vary depending on situation and type of team members. In general there could be four types of situation among the team members depending on which a manager has to decide how to lead a team [4]. Firstly, team members are willing to work and have the ability and skill. That means they are self motivated. This type of team can be called self management team. In this situation a project manager has to play the role of a coach and has to just direct what to do.

Secondly, team members could be able to work but unwilling. This may happen due to existence of a feeling of insecurity in the team. In this situation, a manager has to take initiative how to make the team members willing.

Thirdly, team members are willing to work and they are also confident of achieving the goal but they are not skilled enough. Manager has to take initiative how to make the team members able. This can be done ensuring the learning and co-operative environment among the team members.

The forth situation can be, team members are unwilling to work and also they are not able. This is the most critical situation to handle by a manager. In this situation a manager has to ensure both learning, motivating the team members to work and also train the team members.
According to Kathy Schwalbe five major reasons behind a team’s failure, those are [9]:

1. Absence of trust
2. Fear of conflict
3. Lack of commitment
4. Avoidance of accountability
5. Inattention to result

In order to avoid the above situations a project manager has to be very careful and posses some leadership qualities.

According to James P. Lewis, a project manager has to behave like a jazz band leader [10]. The band leader selects the melody that the band will play, sets the tempo and keys, invites the performers and let them do their thing.

Commitment is very much important to ensure success of a team. Lack of commitment may have several reasons, as for example the team member may has professional interest elsewhere, the feeling of insecurity in the project, unclear nature of the rewards and also interpersonal conflicts [11]. Some ways were suggested by Harold Kerzner to minimize the commitment barriers which can be followed are attempts can be taken to change the possible negative views to the project, if there is any conflicts with other employees it becomes urgent for the project manager to intervene and mediate the problem. And if the employee poses his professional interest elsewhere need to find out the ways to satisfy his interest and minimize the problems [11]. Poor communication is a major reason behind failure of a effective team development [11]. The communication gap also needed to be reduced between individuals and also between the employees and management.

A major problem in newly formed team reported by most of the project managers is managing anxiety and the source of the anxiety can the such as the team member has never worked with the project leader and they may be concerned about the project managers leadership style. This also needed to be minimized and sort out.

According to Dr. Rensis Likert who has conducted much research on human behavior within organizations, particularly in the industrial situation, the participative group system he proposed is an optimum solution where leadership is by superiors who have complete confidence in their sub ordinates where motivation is by economic rewards based on goals which have been set in participation, where personnel at all levels feel real responsibility for the organizational goals where there is much communication and a substantial amount of cooperative teamwork exists [12].

Conclusion

Leadership qualities are built on experiences of situation handling, managing projects, maintaining people, etc. A good manager has to have the qualities of a good leader which ensures the success of an organization.

References

1. Dr. R. K. Singla, Principal of Management, 1st ed., Delhi, India, 2009-10.
2. William J. Rothwell, H. C. Kazana., Building In-House Leadership and Management Programs, Their Creation, Management and Continuous Imrprovement. 1999.
3. Prof. Dave Ulrich, University of Michigan and consultants Jack Zenger and Norman Smallwood, Results-Based Leadership.
4. Dr. Darja Šmite, Application of Behavioral Sciences in Project Management, Lecture slides, Advanced Project Management – Leadership, Blekinge Institute of Technology.
5. Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto. (http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/fis/courses/lis1230/lis1230sharma/history4.htm).
6. Rakitin, Steven R., Software Verification and Validation for Practitioners and Managers, 2nd Edition, Page 36, 2001.
7. Hislop, D, Knowledge Management in Organizations – a critical introduction, Oxford University Press 2005
8. Frederick Herzberg, Bernerd Mausner, Barbara Bloch Snyderman, The Motivation to Work
9. Kathy Schwalbe, Information Technology Project Management,6th Edition, 2010
10. James P. Lewis, Team Based Project Management, 1998.
11. Harold Kerzner, Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling
12. R.K. Sapru, Administrative Theories and Management Thought.