R&D Manager's activities in a typical day

I've ever been asked what a R&D Manager/technical director is doing or should do in one working day typically.

I was jabbering at that time since i usually was monitoring or observing other people's work rather than myself.

I realized that i need to have introspection and seriously think about that.

 

It's easy to record the activities what i have done in one single day through PSP like tools, but it's hard to say it is the best way for me to do my job and is valuable to be repeated every day. For some activities, it is meaningless to assign them with a certain time. For example, holding a meeting with customer is dynamic, it depends on when customer is available. So i would rather to figure out a activity list with rough range, percentage and priority than static time.

 

Generally, in a typical day, I may do the following.

 

1. My first thing for one day’s work is to check emails; this is regular, usually half or 1 hour, customer related email is always with highest priority and should give a simple response ASAP.

 

2. Then I will prepare a to-do list. Mainly there are 3 parts for preparing the list

*) review yesterday’s work and check what was left ongoing, need to go on

*) check monthly plan and weekly minutes to see what should be done today according to the plan;

*) look ahead tomorrow’s work to see what could be prepared.

The to-do list will be ordered by priority, for dated activity, mark the exact time and log it into outlook agenda with 15 minutes notification ahead.

This may also take from half an hour to 1 hour.

What will be the main content of my to-do list? Usually it contains six parts:

*) check project status, 10%

*) write detailed email to communicate with customers, including question answer, project status communication, share each other’s view etc. 10%

*) hold/join internal meetings, including regular meeting, new task assign, plan update, member’s role arrangement or rearrangement, project lifecycle output review, problem solving, conflict mediation and decision making. 20%

*) join external meeting, including customer’s meeting, higher level R&D management meeting, meetings with product, marketing, sales or support departments or teams, weekly report meeting. 20% (in a startup company, reporting to your GM)

*) Team building, including CV search, JD prepare, Offer prepare, interview arrangement, interview, open talk to members, training arrangement, mentoring junior members. 20%

*) Knowledge learning and sharing, including new software engineering thoughts, industry technology trends research, architecture demo and good articles recommendation/remark. These are very important for preparing the team’s development vision and strategy. 20%

 

3. All the other things to be done today will mostly obey the to-do list except some instant events like system crash or customer’s urgent case.

 

4. The last thing for one day’s work is a brief summary. Mark the activity status, note down some lessons or experience, a brief daily report.