A Manager Who Does Not Understand His or Her Employees’ Work

Unfortunately, this situation occurs frequently. In some organizations, managers are routinely moved from department to department, often functioning in business areas in which they have no real knowledge or experience. This causes difficulty for the BA because interviewing the manager does not result in accurate business models or requirements. The BA initially may not be aware that the requirements are inaccurate. A solution may be delivered and be inadequate to support basic key business functions.

The first assessment that a BA must make in each business area that he or she analyzes is who knows what. The BA needs to know who in the department is considered the “expert.” Who are the consistent, experienced workers? What are the views of these experts on the current management? How does management view the workers? Does the manager like his or her job and employees? Do the workers like the manager? Respect the manager?

You will never see the answers to any of these questions in a requirements package. These are important questions that the BA must answer in order to gather accurate requirements, but they will never be explicitly stated as a project task. When you are planning and estimating your project work, be sure to include time for this analysis. (You will want to give this a politically correct name like “getting to know the stakeholders”).

These questions are also not the type of questions that you will ask directly (i.e., “How do you like your boss? Does the manager have any idea what really goes on in this department?”). Rather, you must be a detective and cleverly learn the answers to these questions indirectly. Your first meetings with your stakeholders will give you a lot of information, especially if you are able to read the non-verbal clues given by the group. Do all of the workers defer to the manager when a question is asked? If so, it may be that they have learned not to express an opinion without first knowing where the boss stands. Does the manager hesitate to answer when you ask a specific question about work in the business area? Does the manager defer to one of his or her employees? Which one? How do the other employees react to this? Is this employee a favorite?

In most cases, a manager who is not as knowledgeable as his or her workers will tell you this directly and recommend that you rely on one or two experienced people in the group for your requirements elicitation. This is the ideal situation and gives you permission to ask others in the group for the business details. Managers who are open and honest about their knowledge typically develop employees who are open and honest.

Even if a manager does not volunteer this information, it will become very clear to you quickly if he or she is not knowledgeable about the business. Ask the same question in a couple of different ways during the meeting and see if you get the same answer. Ask about exceptions. Ask closed-ended questions that require the manager to answer yes or no. Watch for hesitations, uncomfortable body language, and a lot of imprecise, vague answers.

If you determine that the manager is not a business area expert, discuss this with the PM as soon as possible. You may be able to get around the problem, but this is the type of obstacle that can put a project behind schedule, so the PM must be involved. The two of you can decide how to proceed and back each other up when necessary. You can work to get more time with others in the department. You can give the manager an out by offering to save his or her time by asking detailed questions to employees because you know the manager is busy. If the manager insists on being your only source of requirements, let the PM handle this issue with the executive sponsor. Remember that you are working to really understand the business needs of all of the stakeholders. If one person is preventing this task from being accomplished, the project will be negatively impacted, and your responsibility is to report the problem and help find a resolution.