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Micromanagement is a common problem in many departments of a business. It is particularly rampant in the Information Technology industry. Whether it was developing the largest real estate database in America or a criminal records system for law enforcement in one of the largest counties in America, I’ve seen some common issues inside IT that contribute and also resolve micromanagement problems.

To be sure, micromanagement is not always a bad thing. In fact, micromanagement serves a very critical part of getting projects back on track that have been derailed for various reasons. For example, just last year I stepped into a flailing ecommerce project at a mid-sized mail-order retailer. The project had gone nowhere with the existing staff for three months. I injected myself into the project as the project manager, software architect, and lead programmer. This is after having spent the last 3 years outside of engineering. Within two weeks the project was back on track and completed in half the time it was originally projected to take.

The success of this micromanagement came from the following aspects of micromanaging the project:

1. Created an immediate milestone success
2. Motivated and inspired the rest of the team that was being productive
3. Removed the ineffective players from the project
4. Allowed the rest of the team to expand their skillset
5. Left the team as self sufficient

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be expanding the details of the rest of these 5 aspects of successful micromanagement. For now, we are going to start with the first aspect: Creating an immediate milestone success.

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