Ask Slashdot: How Do You Prove an IT Manager Is Incompetent?

An anonymous reader writes "I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry. After just a little scratching, it has become quite clear that the 'head of IT' has no modern technological skills, and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question. (This has led to countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive.) How can one objectively illustrate that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department? The head of IT doesn't necessarily need to know how to write code, so a coding test serves no purpose, but should be able to run a project. Are there objective methods for assessing this ability?"

Comments

OMG, John is that you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe you submitted this to Slashdot!

Re:OMG, John is that you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear John,

If you have been hired as a consultant to fix a companies problems with their IT department and you have to turn to /. for help; Do you really feel that you are in the place to criticize another professionals competency? /Sheldon

Re:OMG, John is that you?

[jcaplan]

Everyone already knows it, but they need an outside consultant to say it. That's why you were brought in. Senior management is not ignoring the problems at all. They know that costs are out of line and that there is dissatisfaction. Your job is to carefully document what everyone knows to be true, so they can get rid of the under-performing IT manager. Talk to everyone, compare to industry standards and write it all up in your report.

Circular logic

[Carewolf]

He is the IT manager because he is incompetent, or possibly incompetent because he is the IT manager. Not sure which comes first but they always follow.

Re:Circular logic

[Anonymous Coward]

The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit, will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, "Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence." In more formal parlance, the effect could be stated as: employees tend to be given more authority until they cannot continue to work competently. It was formulated by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous[1] treatise, which also introduced the "salutary science of hierarchiology".

The principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. Peter's Corollary states that "[i]n time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties"[2] and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence." "Managing upward" is the concept of a subordinate finding ways to subtly manipulate his or her superiors in order to prevent them from interfering with the subordinate's productive activity or to generally limit the damage done by the superiors' incompetence.

This principle can be modeled and has theoretical validity for simulations.[3]

(wikipedia)

Re:Circular logic

[Xest]

It's how you evidence it though, but honestly I think the person posing the question answered it for themselves.

The IT department is running at double the cost of departments in equivalently sized businesses (and fields?) and that's all the evidence you need. Though if you need other objective methods for things like project delivery then simply ask if they're on time and on budget. If they're not and the justifications he provides as to why don't stack up then that's about as objective you can get in something that is semi-arbitrary in nature like project management. Other things you can measure objectively are number of outstanding support tickets, average response times, that sort of thing - make his support function adhere to a reasonable SLA and if he can't adhere to it look at the reasons why, if it's poor management again then there's some more evidence for you.

As for what to do, well a few options are common in this scenario:

1) Sack him.

2) If you can't sack him right off, reorganise - state that IT isn't performing so the company intends to split IT into two, support and operations or some such. Leave him in charge of one, bring someone in who can do the job, split the budgets taking away most of his and his responsibility to the new guy. In a year or two decide to merge the departments again eliminating one of them and removing redundant posts - guess which ones lose their jobs? the incompetent manager and his incompetent underlings, keep the good ones. Enjoy your shiny new IT department.

3) If the CEO/directors are part the problem and don't want him to go, quit and go elsewhere. It's no longer your problem.

Really it depends how much you care, how much the management above him cares, what country you're in and what the employment laws are, and how much of a shit you give about lazy/incompetent people remaining in employment, or at least, under your company's employment. These things are all highly subjective so it's no point listening to me or anyone else on but something you have to figure out for yourself.

Re:Circular logic

[GargamelSpaceman]

There's another thing at work in IT, at least, and probably everywhere else: If you spend the effort necessary to be good at your job, you don't spend that effort in getting your next job.

The most effective way I've noticed to be promoted in IT is to be incompetant at IT, then you spend all your time appearing to be doing something, and you seek the paperwork tasks involving lots of emailing and nagging, and checking off what is done and not done. You always appear more concientious than the guy who ignores emails for an hour so they can code.

Really any idiot can do this sort of thing, though it is stressfuli - you're lying for a living, and lies breed more lies - it becomes harder and harder to spackle things over so it's good to move around.

People gain the opportunity to try their hat at faking it ( which is all managers do as they can't really know the details they are in charge of managing ) by fooling someone into thinking they can code ( or do job x ) ( another fake it test ).

If you don't want a job, just suck at it. If you want a better job fake it till you make it ( which is a certain form of sucking at it ). But accept the fact that you'll be stressed out all the time. It's probably no worse than the alternative because shit rolls downhill, and there's plenty of shit to go around when everyone is an incompetant liar. You're gonna be stressed no matter what. Higher ups are not all Zapp Branigan having let their success go to their heads, ( though some are ). Some of them probably know exactly what they are. Kudos to them.

Re:Circular logic

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the budget being out of scale for similar size organizations may also be due to what they are producing. I had this same question asked by a friend who wanted me to essentially agree that their Director of Technology was being wasteful and negligent. It took me two seconds to see why their expenses were higher than similar sized IT shops: they were supplying SaaS. The problem was the rest of the company was ignorant of how to properly count costs in the situation. They were simply attempting to sum all expenses and use that total to show the department was too expensive... even though it was also the only production department. They didn't account for the server costs/overhead of having their product as a SaaS vs similar sized development companies that sold prepacked products.

Realistically it all depends on what field of business they are in, the actual role of IT in said business, and their interior directives.

Re:Circular logic

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Ehhhhhh, I agree with you, the very fact that the department is obviously dysfunctional is prima-facie evidence of the IT manager's inadequacy. However, in most cases its necessary either politically or legally to have some real concrete data. My advice to the OP would be to recommend the initiation of improved methods. These can be drawn directly from CMM/CMMI principles. In other words recommend the capturing of metrics. If there is a help desk function then recommend the use of a ticketing system. For development projects, etc formal project management should be initiated with concrete deliverables, goals, and measures in place. If and when the incompetent manager cannot manage these functions or the data they return demonstrates where improvements are needed and said manager is incapable of making those improvements then upper management will be in a position to change things.

Don't suggest sacking people etc. Simply point out where the dept seems to be deficient, problem areas. Relate them to CMM recommended measurement and management processes which are not in place and recommend THOSE measures. Don't make it personal. In fact you should frame the entire thing as simply a management improvement process which will improve the performance of the company. If the existing manager can carry out those improvements and produce good results GREAT! If not then his ultimate departure/lateral movement will be inevitable. If upper management STILL does nothing? Well, that's OK, you are getting paid and you can only lead the horse to the water. Simply make sure you provide everyone with your recommendations and reasoning in a nice report so they won't feel like you didn't earn your pay.

I'd look at this as a good opportunity. Business management consulting is MUCH more lucrative than low-level tech consulting. If you can actually help these people you can get into a whole area of business that can be quite lucrative and rewarding.

I'm not a manager, but...

[geminidomino]

IANAM, but the simple pseudo-code I came up with would probably work.

for each job responsibility
          if !manager.capable(responsibility) then
                        ++strikes;

if strikes > threshold
          new CafeteriaCashier(manager);

I'm confused.

[jtownatpunk.net]

If it's your job to determine what the problem is, you should already have the skills necessary to thoroughly evaluate the situation and communicate your conclusions. If you've already determined that this person is the problem, what is left to assess? If you don't know how to objectively determine that this person is the problem, how have you concluded that this person is the problem? If you don't know how to evaluate someone's competence and can't explain your conclusions to the people who hired you, how can you be qualified to tell this company what's wrong with the department?

Are you really the one to be asked?

[cdrudge]

I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
...
How can one objectively illustrate that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department?

If you have to come to Slashdot to ask this question, are you REALLY qualified to help the company come to grips?

While the 'head of IT' and/or some number of IT staff may indeed ill suited to perform their jobs correctly, if I was involved in the situation even if my job wasn't ultimately affected, I'd be really pissed that my department's direction was changed based on the advice of a 3rd party that had to post an Ask Slashdot.

Return on investment

[alen]

Every IT project needs to save the company money in some way and these savings should be easily quantifiable.

No ROI then no project should be funded
I have seen geeks fall on love with geeky projects that cost a lot of money, seem to have no end and dont do anything for the organization except to show how busy they are