Introduction
Management is not something for someone who has studied computer science or engineering – that’s what I thought during my first 2-3 years of university studies. As a university graduate, this is a preconception about management many may have. In a traditional sense, project management involves improving work processes, coordinating communication between different departments, leading a team with a management framework, defining and aligning strategic goals for an organization, etc. When googling Management, the first hit I get is the following definition:
“The organization and coordination of the activities of a business in order to achieve defined objectives”
More than halfway through Visma’s Management Trainee program I believe there are many more aspects that must be added to that story. In this blog post I want to highlight how coding and technology can be utilized in a management role.
So far in my Visma lifetime, I have experienced the following cases where technology plays an important role in setting strategic goals and aligning roadmaps.
Coding is a tool that gets your will through for strategic importance. Identifying objectives that can create business impact is a skill that strongly synergizes with understanding to what extent the impact can be established. Coding is a way to do that. If you want to demonstrate a concept that has great business impact, you can simply create a simple proof of concept that demonstrates this, via any programming language of your preference (like Python, Java, C#, etc.). By doing this you will not only understand the core business better in itself, but also be able to convince and motivate stakeholders to go for your recommendations.
Actually bridging the gaps between development and business. As mentioned earlier, a key task in management is to set the strategic goals for an organization based on the available resources. The common scapegoat for project failure in many organizations is miscommunication between those who create the systems and those who set the goals and vision. Being technically aware when setting goals and vision will not only help the organization to assign feasible and correct goals, but also to establish a common language within the organization.
Using data to strengthen your arguments. Having some experience in handling vast amounts of data via technologies like SQL, or even Google Sheets, will not only help you to gain insight in the organization’s business but also be able to use concrete data and samples to argue your case.
All in all, coding and technology can be used as a tool to help you make correct decisions, strengthen your arguments, and understand how the application and business processes correlate. Rapidly creating a prototype to showcase a concept and at the same time have the mandate to make an impact is one of the stronger features coding can have in a management position. I look forward to see how I can further utilize some scripting in Python and hacking in SQL in my coming data analysis project!
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