Supervise information technology personnel
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 12 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 12 occupations that perform it.
- Monitor the performance of project team members to provide performance feedback.
- Supervise computer programmers or other systems analysts or serve as project leaders for particular systems projects.
- Hire, supervise, and direct workers engaged in special project work, problem-solving, monitoring, and installation of data communication equipment and software.
- Supervise engineers or other staff in the design or implementation of network solutions.
- Assign, coordinate, and review work and activities of programming personnel.
- Supervise and assign work to programmers, designers, technologists, technicians, or other engineering or scientific personnel.
- Direct and execute pre-production activities, such as creating moodboards or storyboards and establishing a project timeline.
- Write or supervise the writing of game text and dialogue.
- Train staff on, and oversee the use of, information security standards, policies, and best practices.
- Monitor the performance of project team members, providing and documenting performance feedback.
- Supervise and provide instructions for workers collecting and tabulating data.
- Supervise the work of data management project staff.
- Supervise the work of programmers, technologists and technicians and other engineering and scientific personnel.
- Direct or coordinate activities of project personnel.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Enterprise platforms
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
12 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Clinical Data Managers
- Computer Network Architects
- Computer Programmers
- Computer Systems Analysts
- Computer User Support Specialists
- Information Security Engineers
- Information Technology Project Managers
- Project Management Specialists
- Software Developers
- Statisticians
- Video Game Designers
- Web and Digital Interface Designers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Supervise personnel activities”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.