Can an IT manager keep their technical skills and still be effective?

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Mon, 11/27/2006 - 5:00am.

Computerworld asked the question, Can a Manager Be a Techie and Survive? The article attempts to answer the question, but dances around what makes it possible. The only real answer that is given is time slicing, which we all know as ball juggling.

Ball juggling allows you to handle multiple priorities throughout your day without losing any of them. You have to constantly reassessing priority to what you're working on. Anyone who has worked for more than a year in the IT industry knows how to do this.

What you need are some real, useful tips on how to keep your technical skills honed. I've managed to keep my technical skills pretty sharp by doing the following:

1) Stay abreast of new development. Technology changes all the time, so it's important to keep up. You can do this using RSS and subscribing to sites such as Slashdot, Network World and News.com.

2) Read white papers. When you hit the sites above make sure you dive into the meat of the technology and read some white papers related to it. Yes, some white papers are written by the vendor, but others are written by people who have used the technology. I like Tech Republic's IT Papers site.

3) Get your hands on demo units. If you work in a company that allows it, contact your vendors and ask to have review units dropped off. Most vendors will welcome the opportunity for you to look into new products.

4) Get your hands dirty. When issues happen at work get involved. Don't just sit on technical bridges, become an active participant. Follow-up with people who know about a certain technology that you don't know about.

5) Set up a test network. You need to invest some of your off hours to staying on the technical edge. One of the better things you need to do is install a test network at home. You can pick up a cheap server and clients from eBay. Your goal is to install and play around with various network operating systems and clients.

As you can see, there is way more you can do that "time slice." You need to put into your technical skills what you expect to get out of them.