2 ways of management

I have recently recognized two different ways of management:
- management through processes
- management through empowered teams

In fact I knew them for a long time already, but just recently I recognized, that those are two controversial ways of management and according to my personal core values I support management through empowered teams.

Processes are good

I have heard the statement, that "The big number of people can be managed only through processes". Nice, we have tried that. It came out, that bright people don't want to be managed through processes, at least processes, which has been established by so-so colleagues. But still, processes are good. They help to organize our work. After process has been agreed, it should be reviewed regularly to understand existing shortcomings and find more effective ways of getting things done. Note that in order to be able to fix a process quickly, it should be very lightweight.

Processes weights

If you have a big bunch of rules, papers, positions and regulations signed by CIO, you will not be able to optimize this kind of process easily. I suppose, that having such heavyweight process supposes that you also have a process manager. Oh, I love those guys, they know, how to create blanks for documents, describe processes by activity diagrams and prepare regulations for CIO signing, useful, isn't it? How we can measure, is this particular process light- or heavyweight? I would measure it by the time and effort spent to introduce changes into a process.

Changes

Have you heard, that people usually want to improve very much, but they don't want to change. How it is possible to improve without going through change, I don't know. Changes are hard to accept, hard to get everybody's commitment, hard to plan, hard to manage. Kent Beck has been saying, if it is hard to do something for you, you have to do it more frequently. By the way, this is the reason, why I am writing this blog ;)