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Organisational changes: New IT leadership

' ... A good project manager, right. Thinking ahead, is vital. Having the ability to also think right across the project and the impact of what something happening on this part of the project is going to have over here, is also very important. Obviously if you take as kind of read, they've got to be good at planning, and monitoring progress against the plan, all the kind of things that you would just automatically expect somebody to be good at.

They got to be obviously good at moulding the team together, making sure that they get the right people in the team, ... I think we need to look also not just at the project manager look at the team itself in Multinational, the balance of it. ... they've also got an eye for detail ... What else, you also expect the drive and the energy and ??? motivate people and get them enthusiastic about the whole thing, create a sense of kind of urgency about the place, you know, make people very clear about what their objectives are, what's expected of them. I think another good model I ??? years ago which I always thought was quite good, ... and it was all about there were three things, there was achieving the task, the task of the system, the job, there was developing the individuals, making sure that they've got the right training, not chucking people in the deep end, giving them the right kind of support, encouragement and so forth and there was the maintaining the team about keeping the team together, the right balance and if need be go for a pint in the pub if things are going really badly you know ???. ...

So, all a bit difficult trying to find someone who's got all that. You can introduce the technical side of it as well, although I don't think that's the important thing, ... Well, funnily enough I don't think detailed knowledge of the business is that important. I think knowledge of actual business processes, you need to understand the structure of the business and the people and you know who does what and if you want to get things through, the politics almost, channels of communication. I don't think you necessarily need..in Manny's case he doesn't need to become a marine underwriter as such. ... obviously you need to be able to establish credibility in the business so you need to know enough about it and what's happening in the market place, you know but you don't need to become a detailed business expert.

And on the technical side, I've heard guys say you don't really need to know the technology inside out, obviously, if you know a little bit it helps with your credibility with the team and so forth so you can get involved in some of the detailed things but having said that, the client-server technology is so complex, I think it does, it is a big advantage if you know how it all fits together and ok, I don't expect a project manager to be able to go and write necessarily a SQL statement or anything but they need to know enough about the concepts of the various aspects of the technology. ...

So to get all these things it's going to be very difficult.'

X041 page 004.03 (tape 02.2.02) Gordan Notes/Tape 14/06/94

Social influence: Individual: Ability
Technical influence: Process: Project management


Recording
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Social influence
Technical influence

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