September 15, 2011 at 10:38 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Dotted Line Relationships Are Everywhere – Get Good at Them!
September 15, 2011 at 10:54 pm
Dotted lines add a bit of complexity for certain. If the group at each end of the dotted line understands the objectives and the scope of that dotted line - I think it works well.
If a Project Manager, for instance, does not fully grasp the project or the resources available, it can become quite messy. The same holds true for anybody connected by a dotted line. Understanding of your realm of responsibility and overall goal of the team created by those dotted lines helps a lot. Good communication doesn't hurt either.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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September 16, 2011 at 2:08 am
I hate dotted lines. It often seems to me that there are more dotted ones than solid ones...
If you have requirements of another team, you should be raising a change/service request with that team's manager and allowing him/her to manage it entirely, or if there is a lot of work involved, the other manager can transfer staff to you as 'managed resources' for x days or weeks. These 'resources' then report directly to you for that period of time and get assigned back to their regular manager afterwards.
Otherwise you're constantly arguing over whose work is the most urgent and the developers end up trying to run multiple projects concurrently, get pushed from pillar to post and everything gets delivered late.
Ben
^ Thats me!
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September 16, 2011 at 2:26 am
Interesting point. My actual line manager actually rarely gives me any direct instruction. I would say our team has no hierarchy of 'command' as such and really does not need it. We simply discuss what needs doing (i.e client requirements) with whoever seems most qualified and do our best to get it done. It's flat as you like and I think the arrangement suits most devs - we all know we need to make money to survive and what we need to do to achieve that.
September 16, 2011 at 3:12 am
I would almost go so far as to say that if you need to rely on a formal reporting structure to manage, you're probably not ready to manage. All the effective managers I've ever seen - both go getters and people people - have managed by moral authority and respect rather than hierarchy.
As such, I have no problem with the concept of dotted lines, since they always exist anyway. What I do have a problem with is abuse of position, whether it's formal or not, and that is what I believe makes for uncomfortable situations far more than having multiple bosses.
Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat
September 16, 2011 at 3:21 am
Dotted lines are useful for the overall business but I feel often the guy at the lower end of the line does not get the required credit for the work he does. I have worked in such scenarios where after a while the smaller guy is taken for granted and his line manager is not given enough visibility at the end of year reviews.
The dotted line allows requester to use a resource without having to cater to the other aspects such as trainings and reviews etc which feels like a lack of accountability to me. Problem is , if you want to be an exceptional DBA you need to be able to manage this situation effectively i.e the onus is on you.
September 16, 2011 at 3:43 am
Dotted lines represent the triumph of pragmatism over purism.
I loved it when I was a contractor - I was brought in to do a job, I did that job with reference to defined interfaces, I had no legacy stuff to support and no dotted lines to service.
Life as a permie is different: I have many stacked 'main' jobs to do, and I have a load of other stuff to do too. I multi-task, so my concentration has to be switched many times in a day, and as a result my 'main' job of the day gets less of my time continuity is difficult to maintain. Still enjoyable: responsive to changing priorities, but perhaps less efficient in output.
September 16, 2011 at 5:07 am
I live in a dotty world! It is just what the doctor ordered, and that is no accident as I work in a hospital.
I am clinical information systems manager. I report to the matron of the department. My directions are set in discussion with the Clinical Director and the Clinical Head and my task set is prioritised and projects co-designed with the Consultant who is the 'Clinical Information Lead'. I liaise with the organisations IT Manager regarding overall IT strategy and integration of my mandate with his, and also with that of our 'IT infrastructure provider' and the medical equipment support 'provider'.
It works well from the IT user perspective. They get represented by their 'own' IT professional in the grand scheme of things while also getting all the departmental solutions and tweaks that they want according to their own priorities. I am also on hand to keep the users adept at using the usual Windows packages, solve local equipment and network failures and generally hold their hands.
I can also listen to them and help them to develop their ideas when they ask the inevitable 'can we just make this little change...?' or 'I am doing this bit of research and need...'. I can identify 'large' projects and move them up the dotted line and I can pretty accurately interpret 'symptoms' and delegate the problem solution to the right people.
Stimulating for me, good for my clinical colleagues, good for keeping the infrastructure contractor 'honest' and good for productivity and efficiency of the organisation.
Yes, it can be stressful but that is the management side of the job... no problems, nothing to manage, no stress!
September 16, 2011 at 6:38 am
"do you like dotted lines?" is almost a silly question because the real world and society in general is composed of them. Clean demarcation of communication and responsibility is an artifact, since our ancestors started working in tribes, subjective dotted lines were the norm. Rigidly structered systems tend to be brittle, they cannot respond as well to varying situations.
Fear of dotted lines is in part fear of responsibility (beacause rigid decision structures enable the precise location of blame), of making judgement calls on the fly that might not work out.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
September 16, 2011 at 6:56 am
I have dotted lines but the departments represented by them pay for my time, productive or not. All of my time gets charged back. This means that if I get a request from a department, someone has already thought through if what they are requesting is necessary. Then, I ask them to follow it up with a formal request for tracking.
September 16, 2011 at 9:48 am
I also live in the dotted relationship world.
There is a difference in the modern office between line authority and technical authority. Line authority is where an office establishes and supports a direct line of responsibility and authority. Technical authority is where people in an organization realize that if they want to get good quality IT work done which will last and integrate with their current data and systems they must build some sort of working relationship with the technicians. Since people working at these levels do not have the authority to establish direct lines of authority, they establish dotted lines which the success of a company requires if they are to be successful.
The people who often establish these dotted line relationships are the problem solvers who are not managers. However, managers who are experienced in IT and true service related efforts, will often institute dotted line relationships as well. They know the value of these "working relationships" where "real work" is done.
Enough of a rant.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
September 16, 2011 at 9:49 am
There are very very few solid lines in my company, and from what I can see that is increasingly the case with most organizations. The rigid, hierarchical command and control organization was the norm in my father's day, but it is increasingly an anachronism now. I see how much the working world has changed when I try and explain to him (he is 82) 'who' my boss is, 'where I fit' in the organization (he's trying to figure out for himself if I've been a success in my career or not :rolleyes:). From what I can see it is one of the effects of the workplace becoming more diverse. I'm happy to see it.
September 16, 2011 at 7:13 pm
I prefer dotted lines, so long as the people at the end of them realize they don't have all the information about corporate needs - and neither do I. We make the best decisions we can based on the combined information we have, and when in doubt we search out additional information from our managers or others. The better our information, the fewer the restrictions, the more productive we are and the better the outcome.
The best projects I've worked on were the ones where every member took responsibility for their "piece of the party", and stepped in to help as their schedule allowed when another team member needed help.
The worst projects I've worked on were the ones where everyone waited for a manger to tell them what to do next. Always late, over budget, over estimate, over cost.
Communication is key, but don't wait for it to come to you - go out and get you some! :hehe:
Steph Brown
September 17, 2011 at 11:20 am
Personally I like dotted lines. It's more than 40 years since last I had a job where there weren't any, and I suspect that most people work with more dotted lines than solid ones.
A very long time ago I had formal management training in what was called "matrix management" - that was the management structure of an organisation where many of the dotted lines were formally recognised and institutionalised (but they certainly were not solid lines) - and that made it easier for me to understand that I must go outside the line management structure for advice/assistance/guidance and not always rely on my line manager, and that the same applied to people reporting to me - they needed the freedom to get guidance from other senior people; and equally I needed to provide advice and guidance to people not working for me. I would hate to go back to work in a strictly hierarchical system now.
I've had line management jobs, non-line roles where I've had a very small team to assist me in helping the line managers, and non-line roles where I've had no direct reports; often in the non-line roles my line manager hasn't had a clue what I'm doing but could see the results (if a non-line senior manager in some unit is always calling people to come and see him there's something wrong; if he's overwhelmed by the number of people coming to see him or telling their managers to get his views before taking a decision h'e probably doing a good job; but the bottom line is "is the unit for which he provides that function successful").
I've see the dotted lines go wrong - where people somewhere in the matrix didn't fully understand their roles and responsabilities. Only twice in my career have I seen this happen (once when a senior line manager wanted to direct his staff and not let thenm talk to thos nasty matrix people; and once where a senior developer thought he could carry on building castles in the air instead of putting something concrete together because he wasn't being pressured enough, while senior line managers were fighting to have a traditional system with no dotted lines, only - at most - occassional short term secondments of their staff to other projects with the secondment terminable at their absolute discretion. Both times it ended up in disaster. I've seen dotted lines work extremely well dozens of times.
Tom
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