Technical

An effective technical manager is someone who is also technically well-informed. When needed, she is familiar with and can perform all levels of tasks such as troubleshooting and resolving technical problems.

A technical manager provides technical direction for development, design and systems integration. She reviews the work involved and follows the project through testing and production deployment phases.

She may provide technical training to her team and may continue to coach them as needed. She also ensures that there are technical procedures, documentations and standard policies put in place, which she reviews on a regular basis. When it comes to complicated technical problems that may arise, the technical manager should be able to make the right decisions on which solutions to implement. She makes a decision on what is best for the company, whether it may be cost or length of resolution.

She oversees that the data center equipment such as servers and network equipment are current on firmware, patches and codes and implements safety and security of the systems the team supports by applying firewall, host intrusion detection sensor (HIDS) and anti-virus software. The technical manager also implements hardware standardization, clustering and capacity planning for high availability of equipment and applications.

Management

A technical manager ensures that his team performs within set technical guidelines by providing or co-authoring standard operating procedures. He also assigns each team member specific tasks and oversees their performance. Scheduling work and break hours is another of his responsibilities. He ensures that there is enough coverage, whether during normal hours or 24/7 on call rotation.

A technical manager sends his team to technical trainings and boot camps. He makes sure that they are current on their licensing and certifications.

A technical manager meets with his senior management regularly and gives them his monthly and annual reports, which include his team's performance, budgets and project status. He may also meet with his counterparts, technical partners and customers.

He conducts regular meetings with his teams, whether as a whole or through one-on-one discussions. He provides each team member an objective or goal that he will monitor progress or status on throughout the year. He then conducts performance reviews of team members and gives them feedback, as well as makes promotion recommendations or salary increases if and when applicable. The technical manager also posts job openings, conducts interviews and hires and fires employees.

A technical manager meets with his senior management regularly and gives them his monthly and annual reports, which include his team's performance, budgets and project status.

Budget

Reporting and balancing the team's budget is another responsibility of a technical manager. She ensures that she is within budget at all times. She works closely with the finance department in forecasting her budget. When it comes to purchasing equipment, such as new computers, new servers and cell phones, she makes appropriate choices that will benefit the company the most by finding cost-effective ways of buying products that are still high in quality.