Managment

Management tends to be a complicated domain filled with buzzwords and new methodologies being created regularly, but its essence is not as complicated as it seems. Nowadays, we have managers of managers who also have managers, who obey their manager, who in turn has a manager, and so on. There are plenty of courses and certifications for sale, and some of them require annual payments to remain certified. At first glance, this situation seems overly complex, almost like a pyramid scheme, where to be a manager of a manager of a manager, you need an impressive certification that only a few can obtain (but don't forget the annual payments that for the certification that secure you that 'management role').

What exactly is management and what can we learn from it?

In a simplified view, management is about achieving a set of goals with the resources you have available.

You manage a team of people (resources) or self-manage to achieve your desired goal.

Everyone is a manager, they manage their own life with their own resources. Some are better at managing financial resources, others at managing emotions.

It’s part of everyone’s behavior and some goals have intrinsic needs. If you don’t eat because you can’t find food (a resource), the hunger (a need) will shift your goals toward a more important goal: eating!

People tend to think that management is about optimization and profit, but the reality is different. It depends on the context. You’re alive because your own body is managing the resources available, such as internal (organs) and external (oxygen) resources. The body doesn’t care about profit to stay alive and will optimize its biomechanics towards your needs to fulfill your actions. But to fulfill your actions (goals), you need energy (a resource).

The body is not a linear system and it adapts over time to different internal and external stimuli. If you’re an athlete, it’ll optimize the energy you have for the tasks you aim to do. If you’re a musician, it’ll optimize in a different way. There’s no one-size-fits-all recipe. There are different approaches and under certain rules (theory of evolution), we know they’ll have a higher probability of achieving their goals (success).

Managing is about problem-solving and it’s not linear. Problems appear and need to be solved. There are linear workflows, but those are simplified models that help us understand different stages and needs. Simplification, per se, is not bad and can help us solve complex problems. There’s even an acronym used in the military: KISS, which stands for “Keep it simple, stupid!”

The universe is very complex and interconnected, but paying attention to every parameter and relation is not possible. That’s why our brain has optimized its sensory organs to perceive as much as we can, but with limitations. We can only see a certain amount of light, hear a certain range of frequencies, and so on. These elements that we can’t perceive still exist around us, but our brain is not aware of them. The brain doesn’t have enough resources to track everything, but just because we’re not aware of them doesn’t mean they don’t impact our bodies.

The mind can adapt in real-time to pursue the needs and goals we have.

Leadership

Managing a small team of engineers is different from managing a small team of designers, and both are vastly different from managing a large-scale military operation or even a country.

People have different behaviors, needs, goals, and motivations. Their emotional state dictates how they act, unlike machines. Being emotionally aware and empathetic is crucial for self-management or managing others.

When managing a team, leadership is crucial.

Throughout history, we have seen great examples of individuals who were capable of leading others. Unlike dictators who force their population to follow their will, these leaders were followed for their leadership skills. Great leaders not only inspire their teams but also assume responsibility. They do not leave their members behind and are willing to suffer the consequences.

A historical example of remarkable leadership is Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition "Endurance" across Antarctica. The mission was a failure in terms of achieving its goal, but Shackleton’s determination was crucial for the survival of the crew. This story remains till todays as one of the most inspiring survival tales.

They aimed to be the first to cross Antarctica on foot. If we’re going to judge Shackleton according to that goal, then his actions were a failure. So, was Shackleton a bad manager? A bad leader? Quite the opposite. Shackleton knew he was leading people, not a goal. Without the crew, achieving the goal was impossible. When faced with extreme difficulties, he was able to find new solutions that involve a series of bigger challenges. Through incredible determination, he rescued the whole crew.

The story became so big and inspiring that even if they had succeeded in their goal, their recognition and impact might not have been as significant.

It’s important that managers and leaders evaluate the team’s progress in short- and long-term projections. This ensures that the team is not overloaded and progresses with satisfaction.

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is a part of life, but too much hierarchy with excessive restrictions can’t be good. It leads to greater inequality, where the restrictions are often determined by those at the top of the pyramid (“the manager of all the managers”).

It’s important to give some sense of responsibility and freedom to the team, moving towards a more distributed autonomous structure.

What if hierarchy and restrictions were determined by the whole team?

In the Basque Country, there’s a place called Mondragon, where around 1956 a cooperative was established by a priest to serve the community by creating jobs. What’s special about a priest creating a company? Mondragon is not merely a company, it’s a federation of cooperatives. They have several factories, banks, and even their own university. But the most interesting part is that in some of their factories, the owners are the workers. They’re spread globally, and the cooperative model is not the same as in the Basque Country.

Unlike the leadership of Shackleton, where he was the leader and responsible for finding the right crew members, in Mondragon, the leaders (managers) are chosen by the workers. The workers not only choose their hierarchy members, but also determine the difference between the highest and lowest paid employees.

“Mondragon limits managerial salaries to nine times that of the lowest paid member; this is an exceptionally equitable differential compared with the 2014 average CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 127:1 in Spain or 331:1 in the United States (according to the AFL-CIO).” [2]

Their unity and solidarity enable them to have less inequality, and when crises happen, all the workers are willing to lower their salary, including the top managers, in order to face the challenges. Like Shackleton and his crew, there’s hierarchy, but there’s also a sense of union, and both leaders are willing to struggle as much as their peers.

This situation occurs because the hierarchy is not complex, and most members know their managers/leaders. They walk the same path with different responsibilities.

“Reinvestment is substantial, and surplus (not designated as profit) is distributed to members’ personal capital accounts in the Caja Laboral, where they are held as private savings but made available for investment within the co-op group.” [2]

Choosing the right people for the right job

Is it skills or experience that should be the most important aspect when finding the right team? Some might say it’s both, but isn’t the chemistry between team members more important? Does the personality of team members matter? Some managers will agree, some will disagree, but personally, I think the most important factors are the fulfillment of the team when facing problems and how they interact with each other.

Are skills that important? According to Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the greatest explorer alive (2024), when finding the right crew members to take part in incredible, but also incredibly dangerous journeys, skills were not as important as character.

“Whenever feasible, pick your team on character, not skill. You can teach skills; you can't teach character.” Sir Ranulph Fiennes [3]

For Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the motivation or willingness to keep pushing forward in the most remote places in the world, under the worst conditions, was crucial. Skills can’t teach you that. Even for Sir Ernest Shackleton, the most important qualities when searching for the right crew members were: optimism, patience, imagination, and courage. [4]

“The quality I look for most is optimism: especially optimism in the face of reverses and apparent defeat. Optimism is true moral courage.” Sir Ernest Shackleton

Finding motivation

In both expeditions, the crew received small wages or no payment at all, so financial profit wasn’t the motivation. Yet, they were willing to endure much more danger than a regular person. It wasn’t about money or fame. It could have been honor and recognition, as Shackleton mentioned, but even that was not guaranteed. So what could it have been? The answer might be personal and different for every crew member, but the sensation that their lives have meaning to fulfill might be the key.

The pursuit of fulfillment is an ancient topic. Is it achieved through the accumulation of material possessions? Certainly not, as humanity has grappled with such questions for a long time. These tend to be more philosophical topics, with gurus and religions attempting to explain their own experiences. Regardless of religious beliefs, the knowledge behind such concepts is fascinating and sometimes seems “lost in a materialistic world”.

In the Hindu culture, there's very old concept called Svadharma that can be expressed by a quote from Bhagavad Gita: "It is to better fulfill one's own duty (dharma) however imperfectly, than to do that of another, however perfect it may be." [5]

Even if you don’t find your dharma or purpose, that doesn’t mean you can’t find motivation to progress. Obviously, having a higher purpose is more helpful and meaningful for one’s life, but that’s very personal and can take a long time to find. It’s a personal narrative to find meaning in life.

There’s a concept called flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, where a person can find enjoyment in activities when there's a balance between the skills needed to complete a specific challenge. If there’s no balance, the experience might be too boring or create too much anxiety. When it’s rightly balanced, the person enters a state of flow, where enjoyment and focus are high, making one feel like they're living in the moment and losing the sense of time. When you combine such activities with the pursuit of happiness, you fulfill your life. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi also refers that there’s a clear distinction between pleasure and happiness. [6]

In conclusion, it’s clearly important to have the right team of people for that particular job, otherwise, the team might feel boring or anxious. When the leader’s goals align with their members’ goals, the team is willing to go further because they’re driven to fulfil their goal.

Goals and resources

The balance between these elements is probably the most important aspect of management. To achieve a determined set of goals, you need a determined set of resources. When there’s a lack of resources, it doesn’t exactly means that you can’t achieve the goal. It means that the initial plan, using those resources will no longer be sufficient and you either change the goal to match those resources, or adapt into find news way to achieve the goal using different resources.

To achieve a goal, you have needs to fulfil that will encounter difficulties that can turn problems into simple or complex challenges, depending on the expectation and feasibility of your solutions that directly depend on your resources.

Goals can be divided and should be defined according to your resources, otherwise anxiety and failure are probably the thing you should expect.

If your goal is to run 100km, you need to put the work according to your capacity and keep evolving until you’re capable of running a certain weekly mileage. If you expect to run 100km without any proper training, you’ve set yourself to failure.

Finding the right goals (problems to solve) can be challenging. There are methods used to find problems and their causes, such as conducting research, muddle through, root cause analysis…

Resources can be composed by several aspects and their importance will vary according to the goals. Here’s a list of the most common type of resources needed:
- Time
- People
o Expertise / knowledge
o Experience
o Creativity
o Character & motivation
- Materials
- Financial
- Infrastructure & Technologies

Depending on the type of project or goals, the resources will change according to the needs.

How the team manages those resources will be more or less optimal, requiring optimization and automatization to fulfil the needs. Both optimization and automatization are not always necessary and can be overdone, depending on the context. The best solutions sometimes are the most simpler and sustainable. They might not be the most advanced, but their cost and efficiency might be more beneficial. Technology can get in the way of a solution. A great example is on the modern days that heavily relies on digital interfaces for tasks that could have a better solution, and the interface is just another step between the user and solution, adding unnecessary complexity to the experience. [7]

The resources needed can also vary greatly, even for the same type of goal. Let’s image that you don’t have a big budget and lack infrastructure, but on the other hand you have small, highly skilled, motivated and creative team of individuals, that are willing to put an extra effort into find great solutions with such restrictions.

You can also have the exact opposite, where you have an enormous budget, with a complex infrastructure, mainly composed by a team that’s not that skilled, motivated and creative, yet they’re willing to put the effort for a different reason, probably financial. They both reach the same the goals, but with a very different mindset and optimization of resources.

There’s a common saying that goes like, “Good, cheap and fast; pick two”. Sometimes it’s more of a “pick one”.

Understand the stakeholders

“Once stakeholders are identified, the project manager and the project team should seek to understand stakeholders’ feelings, emotions, beliefs, and values.” [8]

As the project unfolds, the stakeholders (individuals, groups or organizations) and their corresponding importance to the project might vary.

Is crucial to engage all the stakeholders, depending on their role, in order to understand their motivations, expectations, decisions… All of these must align towards a solution that it’s negotiated by all, by sharing the same vision towards the same end. The communication requires great soft skills to be able to listen (active listening) and decide according (critical thinking).

The information and feedback gathered from the stakeholders is crucial.

“Communication is the most important factor in engaging with stakeholders effectively.” [8]

Planning and tracking

A great part of managing is to make sure you’re progressing towards the goal. But for that to be possible, you have to know the goals and gather the progress. That’s when planning comes in. It’s about setting an overall view of the project and the best way to tackle it. You can plan before starting a project or during its development. There are multiple frameworks to do so, but generally they obey two principles: linear and non-linear.

So what’s the difference between a linear and non-linear planning?

Linear planning follows a strict set of procedures, while non-linear is adaptive (iterative).

Let’s imagine that you’re building a house. You know that you should start from the bottom up, but that way of thinking is not always the correct one for the project, it depends on the type of project. In a non-linear approach, you can adapt previous tasks according to the feedback gathered from the future tasks. This type of approach is more common in design, unlike constructions, where you can’t afford to build and re-build all the time, because of the costs and time. It’s also more common during creative approaches, where the main goal is to create something new, since there’s no plan to follow, like in a linear approach.

During a linear approach, you previously know the resources and steps (secondary goals) needed, even if there are delays or challenges, you can anticipate a margin of the budget and resources to those. It’s also known as waterfall methodology.

During a non-linear, you can estimate the resources needed, but you’re expecting changes that will also impact the resources. This type of methodology is also known as agile. The resources and goals might change according to the feedback gathered.

Linear = Waterfall (sequential and predictable)
Non-linear = Agile (iterative and adaptive)

Agile is about adapting, like many species do in nature, but that doesn’t mean it’s always the right answer or position to take. Some things need to be predictable. You don’t want something to be adapting all the time and changing its predictability unnecessarily. Expectation and predictability are necessary, otherwise, we would be surprised all the time. While the world doesn’t stop and is constantly evolving, we as humans need to have some predictability, even if it’s only an illusion.

Tracking your progress is important for both approaches, that way you can gather feedback if something is working or not towards the goals. Soon you’ll find out if your estimations were precise or not.

Planning schedules

There are several ways to plan a schedule of a project, but after you get to know more detailed information about the project and the approach needed, you can:
1 - Decompose the project scope into activities
2 - Sequence related activities
3 - Estimate the effort, duration, people and physical resources required to complete the activities
4 - Allocate people and resources to the activities based on availability
5 - Adjust the sequence, estimates, and resources until an agreed-upon schedule is achieved [8]

How can we track progress? By using data.

Data measures parameters and requires context for meaning.

There’s two types of data, qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative data is hard to be expressed in numbers, its focus is on qualities that are hard to quantify. On the other hand, quantitative data is easy to translate into numbers. This might be confusing, but let’s imagine that every day you take a small walk on the park. The distance you walk, the time it takes, the amount of steps and so on, are all very easy to quantify, if you have the patience to count or some equipment to track. But how do you quantify your emotions and the feelings you have during the walk? You can try, but it’s more of a guess than something rigorous. Somedays you feel happy, some sad, but how much happy? Like a 7 out of 10? How do you know what’s a 10 supposed to mean? And how that translate to another person? Are both feeling 7 out of 10 in terms of happiness? The point is, this type of data (qualitative) is hard to be expressed into rigorous numbers.

Qualitative data = hard to quantify
Quantitative data = easy to quantify

“There is a natural linkage between planning, delivering, and measuring work. That linkage is metrics. Establishing metrics includes setting the thresholds that indicate whether work performance is as expected, trending positively or negatively away from expected performance, or unacceptable. Deciding what to measure and how often is best informed by the phrase “only measure what matters.” [8]

Interpret the data

“The value of measurements is not in the collection and dissemination of the data, but rather in the conversations about how to use the data to take appropriate action.”[8]

Data without context it’s useless. It needs context to be interpreted and to be translated into meaning.

Numbers can be dense and with complex relationships that are hard to understand. Statistics are very useful for finding meaning in quantitative data, especially in big datasets. There are formulas and algorithms that can help you “predict” a progression of numbers according to the data collected. It’s about recognizing patterns and relationships in the data, but those can be hard to detect without the proper tools.

In today’s technological terms, the term AI is getting famous and sometimes used without any meaning, other than a marketing strategy. Most of the times is not artificial intelligence, its tons and tons of data being analyzed by a set of algorithms where the computer can predict with higher probability the next result. That’s machine learning, where the computer is able to recognize patterns and learn from them.

Humans have the ability to imagine / visualize, which tends to be more prominent towards a divergent thinking (non-linear / iterative). On the other hand, the computer are better at convergent thinking (linear), with a more logical progression.

The value of the data, is to collect it, interpret it and take actions according to the results.

What data can tells us?

“The measures being collected are important, but what is done with the measures is just as important. The intent in measuring and displaying data is to learn and improve.”[8]

Data can show us measures of success and failures, bottlenecks and challenges. Where to aim for optimization or where to automate. It can tell us where we are located during the development and if it meets our expectations.

To know the current status of the project, we should compare to the planning stages to get the perception if it’s meeting our expectations or not.

By presenting that data to the stakeholders, they’re now aware of the progress and expectation. That will dictate if they should continue that pace or adapt to meet the established deadlines or budget.

The data will show us what to address and there are methods and strategies to deal with that. Don’t forget that quantitative data won’t tell you everything. It won’t tell you exactly how satisfied is your customer or your team.

It requires empathy to understand the people around you.

Budget

The budget is the financial component of the project, where several cost estimates are allocated, including:
- Work cost estimates
- Contingency reserve
- Management reserve

“The project budget should include contingency reserve funds to allow for uncertainty.
Contingency reserves are set aside to implement a risk response or to respond to risk events should they occur. Management reserves are set aside for unexpected activities related to in-scope work.”[8]

During the development of the project, the allocated funds might change according to the current progress. This flexibility can optimize value delivery and help the project keep moving forward.

It’s also important to mention that depending on the approach used (linear or non-linear), a change in the product can have a significant impact on the budget. Usually, the later the change occurs, the higher the cost.

“Risks are an aspect of uncertainty. A risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives. Negative risks are called threats, and positive risks are called opportunities.”[8]

Quality

Quality is focused on achieving the requirements set by the stakeholders.

Not all situations require the same type of quality. It’s interesting to note that “quality” is perceived differently by different people and countries. A notable example of this comparison is between China and Japan. Despite their geographical proximity, their views and attitudes towards “quality” are very different. China tends to prioritize large-scale manufacturing, producing low to medium-quality products made possible by cheap labor and materials. Their product requirements are not as strict as those in Japan. Traditionally, Japanese has strict quality standards, preferring high-quality products crafted with specialized labor. Both strategies are valid, yet one is without doubt more appropriate.

If we start to think in terms of sustainability and experience, we want to aim for something durable, with long longevity and that keeps the user happy when interacting with. These values often come with a higher cost reflected on the final product. Today’s market evolved more around high consumption, lower durability, shorter longevity and poorer user experience. A lot of times companies prefer to give a new product, because it’s “easier and cheaper” than to restore. This mentality shapes the market into low quality products made in abundance.

On the other hand, we see a shift from manual labor to industrialized labor. As a result, hand-crafted products are becoming affordable only for the luxury market. Although industrialization has facilitated production and consumption, it has also allowed major companies to gain high market shares, which leads to less diversity and lower quality standards. Consequently, many interesting products that introduce diversity are no longer profitable and tend to disappear from the market. While we have a larger pool of products to choose from today, the dominance of industrialized production often results in less true diversity. We get more in quantity but less in quality and diversity. It’s more and more of the same.

Technology and fast consumption culture have driven the industrialization and distribution of products by lowering quality standards and compromising sustainable values.

Personally I would prefer to see the future as:
Technology and sustainability, with high-quality standards demands drive the industrialization and distribution of the products.

For this shift to happen, there’s a cost to pay, which is less recurring purchase (less fast consumption culture).

Frameworks

There are several different types of approaches when dealing with project management. They both have their pros and cons, depending on the context and type of project. Some are more specific, focusing on a particular step of development, while others are more general.

Here are some of the current most famous ones:

Waterfall

Waterfall is a linear framework, where the project is completed in sequential stages. You plan as much upfront and then execute the sequential tasks. Any change during the process can be hard to implement and the further it goes into development, the harder and expensive it gets.

Agile

We’ve seen before that Agile is mainly about being adaptive (non-linear) especially useful for projects that requires continuous development. The term was coined by a group of software developers that were unhappy with the classical linear approach and decided to create a manifesto, called Agile Manifesto. The manifest is now comprised of several principles, but its values are: [9]
- Individuals and interactions over process and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan

Kanban

Kanban is a Japanese framework that uses boards to plan and organize tasks according to their phase and prioritization. It’s useful to distribute tasks and manage the team, which tends to be easier for eliminating bottlenecks and keeping the productivity high. It’s valuable at:
- Visualize the work
- Limit work in process (WIP)
- Manage flow
- Make management policies explicit
- Improve collaboratively

It consists of a board with several columns that represent the phases / stages of lifecycle of the product / service. The most basic one is composed by: to-do, in progress and done.

Scrum

Scrum is probably the most popular agile framework. It’s mainly used in software development. The team works in sprints and release what they have done every two weeks.

Everything starts with the user / client, where you get a list of what they wish for.
As a (role), I want (feature) so that (reason).

After getting the list of their wishes you create a task and put it in a backlog. Depending on the complexity of the tasks, some will be easy to accomplish, others will take more than two weeks. For time consuming tasks (also known as epic), you can slip it across several sprints, leave it for later or create a new project around it.

Usually during the sprint, you set a Kanban board that contains:
- Backlog
- Next Sprint
- To-do
- In Progress
- Testing
- Finished

There are short daily meetings to get and share quick updates. The progress of the sprints are also measured. At the end of the sprint, there’s a meeting to reflect on it, usually divided into two parts:
- Sprint review (2h) – discuss what they’ve done
- Sprint retrospective (1h) – discuss about what went well and could be improved

There are three roles in scrum: product owner, scrum master and the team.

Design Thinking

Design is about finding and solving problems. There are several approaches on how to tackle a problem depending on the problem’s complexity. Design Thinking is a human-centered iterative, non-linear methodology that allows to approach a problem with a different perspective.

It’s generally divided into 5 steps:
- Empathize
- Define
- Idealize
- Prototype
- Test

There are even more frameworks, depending on the field you want to explore, but some more known ones that won’t not be covered are: Lean, PMBOK and PRINCE2.

Models, methods and artifacts

The difference between framework, model and method is sometimes hard to describe and that creates a confusion. The important thing is to be aware of what approaches and tools exist, and which ones are the most appropriated to solve the problem. According to the PMBOK Guide (7th edition), the distinction goes like: [8]
- Model – A model is a thinking strategy to explain a process, framework, or phenomenon.
- Method – A method is the means for achieving an outcome, output, result, or project deliverable.
- Artifact – An artifact can be a template, document, output, or project deliverable.

Here are a list of common models, methods and artifacts used for project management. Some of these are used in other domains as well, making them cross-disciplinary.

Models
- OSCAR
- Cross-cultural communication
- Theory of needs
- Theory X, Theory Y and Theory Z
- ADKAR
- 8-Step Process for leading change
- Cynefin framework
- Stacey matrix
- Tuckman Ladder

Methods
- Affinity grouping
- Analogous estimating
- Wideband Delphi
- Backlog refinement
- Iteration review
- Lessons learned
- Project review
- Risk review
- Impact mapping
- Timebox
- Alternative analysis
- Assumptions and constraints analysis
- Business justification analysis
- Cost of quality
- Decision tree analysis
- Earned value analysis
- Expected monetary value
- Life cycle assessment
- Make-or-buy analysis
- Process analysis
- Root cause analysis
- Stakeholder analysis
- SWOT analysis
- Trend analysis
- Value stream mapping
- What-if scenario analysis

Artifacts
- Project brief
- Project vision statement
- Roadmap
- Assumption log
- Backlog
- Risk-adjusted backlog
- Cost management plan
- Change control plan
- Iteration plan
- Quality management plan
- Release plan
- Requirements management plan
- Risk management plan
- Scope management plan
- Scatter diagram
- S-curve
- Stakeholder engagement assessment matrix
- Story map
- Use case
- Value stream map
- Quality report
- Risk report
- Status report
- Fixed-price
- User story
- Test plan
- Organizational breakdown structure
- Resource breakdown structure
- Risk breakdown structure
- Milestone schedule
- Performance measurement baseline
- Project schedule
- Affinity diagram
- Burn chart
- Cause-and-effect diagram
- Cycle time chart
- Dashboard
- Flow chart
- Gantt chart
- Histogram
- Prioritization matrix

Conclusion

Management involves multiple fields that require planning and organization in order to facilitate communication and keep progressing towards the goals. Depending on the goals and context, there are multiple approaches to solve the tasks needed. When selecting the most suitable frameworks, models, methods, and artifacts, you have at your disposal a variety of tools and alternatives to plan, communicate, execute, gather data, analyze, report and deliver.

Managment it’s about managing resources to solve problems with efficient solutions within imposed limitations. Both the process and the solutions should be centered around the people and do not forget that people feel emotions, not numbers.