Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
conference era were as much managerial innovations as they were tech-
nological or professional ones.
By reconstructing the emerging software crisis as a problem of man-
agement technique rather than technological innovation, advocates of
these new management-oriented approaches also relocated the focus of
its solution, removing it from the domain of the computer specialist and
placing it fi rmly in the hands of traditional managers. Programmers and
systems analysts, it was argued, “may be superbly equipped, technically
speaking, to respond to management's expectations,” but they are
“seldom strategically placed (or managerially trained)—to fully assess
the economics of operations or to judge operational feasibility.”
44
By
representing programmers as shortsighted, self-serving technicians, man-
agers reinforced the notion that they were ill equipped to handle the big
picture, mission-critical responsibilities. After all, according to the
McKinsey report, “only managers can manage the computer in the best
interests of the business.”
45
And not just any managers would do: only
those managers who had traditional business training and experience
were acceptable, since “managers promoted from the programming and
analysis ranks are singularly ill-adapted for management.”
46
It would be
this struggle for organizational authority and managerial control that
would come to dominate later discussions about the nature and causes
of the software crisis.
Seat-of-the-Pants Management
Computer specialists had always posed something of a conundrum for
managers. The expectation that they would quietly occupy the same
position in the organizational hierarchy as the earlier generation of data
processing personnel was quickly proven unrealistic. Unlike a tabulating
machine, the electronic computer was a large, expensive technology that
required a high level of technical competence to operate effectively. The
decision to purchase a computer had to be made at the highest levels of
the organization. But although the high-tech character of electronic
computing appealed to upper management, few executives had any idea
how to integrate this novel technology effectively into their existing
social, political, and technological networks. Many of them granted their
computer specialists an unprecedented degree of independence and
authority.
Even the lowest ranking of these specialists possessed an unusual
degree of autonomy. To be sure, the occupations of machine technician
