A Day in the Life: Development and IT Manager

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Welcome to another chapter in our Day in the Life series, where we learn more about the roles that help IMA succeed. Previously, we spoke to a Data Cleansing Specialist about her role in providing clients with cleansed, quality data and a Software Developer about his responsibilities to maintain the software that makes it all possible.  

Today, we’re bringing you our chat with IMA’s Development and IT Manager, Terry Beaurone. Terry joined IMA in 2022 as a Data Cleansing Specialist. Since then, he became an integral part of the company and eventually took on management of the Development and IT staff. In his role, he oversees the day-to-day work of developers and IT support. From our chat, it’s clear that this job requires a lot of flexibility and helps share the direction of the entire organization! 

What does a Development and IT Manager do? 

As the job title suggests, the main purpose of this role is to manage the development and IT teams. In practice, this means handling the high level of all ongoing development and IT projects, communicating between leadership and the team, and providing the support that keeps projects on track. Not only does this role require a solid understanding of software development and IT management, but you need to be a skilled leader who can guide the teams and communicate effectively throughout the company. Considering how important technology is, it’s clear how vital this role can be to a company. 

Interview with a Development and IT Manager 

Now that we understand a little better what the role is in general, let’s dive into the specifics with Terry! 

What does a typical day look like for you? 

It can actually vary pretty wildly, but typically I'll start my day by going through my emails and making sure I'm caught up on everything I need to know. Then, we do a daily stand up in the morning where I touch base with the team to check on the status of everything and find out if anything new has come up. If needed, I can schedule follow-up calls to help address any issues. 

Other than that, my day varies between providing support to the Operations team, supporting developers, or even just getting in and developing myself. It all depends on what’s needed at the time. 

What skills do you need to do what you do? 

Organization is probably the biggest skill because I have to switch focus between not just different tasks, but entirely different contexts on a regular basis. I need to be organized so I can prioritize the most important things for the day—whether that’s researching an issue that pops up or finishing development to meet a deadline—and still stay on top of the other tasks going on. 

Other than that, my role requires a mix of personal and technical skills. Empathy, for example, is really important when working with members of the team, especially as they're starting to face challenges. On the technical side, a lot of it really comes down to a good software development foundation and research skills. With technology, things are always changing and existing knowledge will only ever get you so far. 

What do people not understand about your job that they should? 

I think the confusion comes down to the fact that IT has a lot of different specializations within it. More often than not, people think it's all-encompassing, when really, even after you start separating into the hardware and operating oriented streams and software development, you can get into a lot of specializations. 

In IT and development, our education only gives us a foundation and we have to build on it from there. So it's entirely possible someone may come to us with a problem that we're going to have to go and spend a day or two researching before we can get back to them with a good answer. 

It's a little bit like doctors; you have your general practitioners, but you also have people who specialize as well. 

What do you most enjoy about your job? 

Honestly, that answer is going to vary depending on what day I'm asked! I think what I enjoy the most is that I get to communicate and interact with everyone who works at IMA on a regular basis. We have an awesome team, so having opportunities to work with everyone—even if it’s only for a 15-minute troubleshooting call—is really nice. 

What prepared you for your role? 

It’s really a combination of things that prepared me. My foundational skills from college helped a lot, but I think what actually prepared me the most was my experience in my previous job as a department manager. Even though it wasn't directly related to the work I currently do, it helped me develop management skills that I don't think I ever would have got had I jumped straight into working in IT.  

Having managerial skills comes in handy when working through chaotic, large projects. My experience really reinforced how important it is to remain flexible and adapt to things as they come, because you can never predict everything that's going to occur during a project, whether it's a couple day long task or a much larger initiative. 

What’s an example of a challenge you faced recently? 

One of the challenges we’ve had recently has been adapting to working with the IT team from PA, now that we’re under the same umbrella. We’ve never worked with an IT team outside of our group, especially one with expertise outside of what we have, so we’ve had to learn how to make sure we’re speaking the same language. It has required some quick adaptation to make sure we properly coordinated with each other during some major transitions. Thankfully, we’ve gotten to a really good place.  

How has IMA/the industry changed since you’ve been here? 

I'd say the biggest change across the industry has been AI, which started to skyrocket about two years ago. It's really shifted how we think utilizing tech to automate what we do. 

Can you speak more on how AI has affected things? 

I haven't had a lot of direct involvement with it, however I think there's a lot of opportunity with AI to accelerate our work as software developers. The caveat is that you really do need to have the underlying development skill sets well established before it's useful to use AI, otherwise, it starts to become a substitute for learning. Without the base knowledge of development, someone can quickly find themselves prompting and re-prompting AI longer than it would've taken to do a bit of research and solve the problem by hand.  

I think it's going to be very interesting over the next while to see how things start to balance out between the need for new developers coming into the industry and how AI is going to impact both their ability as well as the demand for those developers. One of my big concerns is that if the industry is too reliant on AI and not pulling in and training junior developers, we could find ourselves in a situation over the next couple of years where we have a lack of senior developers.  

What is your team working on? 

Our main focus now is uManage Pro and continuing to update and improve it to create a better cleansing and governance experience for clients. In that process, we spend less time with the legacy systems we’ve supported, and developers familiar with the old programs and structures are now getting a chance to pivot to more modern web development. It’s exciting to have a very different tool that offers a lot more granular control when developing.   

One last question: what have you done lately that has been fun or exciting? 

Getting to spend more time doing software development myself, it’s been exciting to see how things have shifted. Now, it’s a lot more viable to build the entirety of an app with just JavaScript. Years ago, that wouldn’t have been possible. You would have had to understand multiple programming languages and how to make them talk to each other. It’s been really cool just being able to get back into software development with all this new stuff that’s rolled out in the last few years. Playing with AI has been fun, as much as my experiences leave me questioning its widespread use. But that’s part of the fun of using it—seeing what kind of amazing or mortifying things that it will produce when you’re trying to use it. 

Outside of work, I’ve been teaching my daughter to appreciate my music taste before anyone else can. My partner recently asked why she was nodding her head to music, until she saw me doing that in front of her. That illuminated the source pretty quickly. 

What does it take to become a Development and IT Manager? 

Often, this role can be split into two—Software Development Manager and IT Manager—and, as such, requirements may be tailored more specifically to the field. However, there is a lot of overlap!  

The typical requirements for a Software Development Manager include: 

• Bachelor's degree in computer science (or a related field) or equivalent practical experience. A Master’s degree or PhD in computer science or a related field is a plus. 

• 5+ years of hands-on software development experience in one or more programming languages (specific languages may be required by employer). 

• 2+ years of experience in managing, mentoring, and leading software engineering teams. 

• Excellent software project management skills. 

• Expertise in programming, debugging, performance measuring and optimization, and accessibility in software design. 

The requirements for an IT Manager generally include: 

• A bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field. Employers typically prefer candidates with a master’s degree, but it’s not a requirement. 

• Several years of experience in IT management with leadership experience. (Often the minimum is 5+ years of experience.) 

• Familiarity with compliance standards in the industry that are relevant to IT and cybersecurity. 

• Technical knowledge/experience with: 

• Managing network infrastructure and disaster recovery planning. 

• Systems administration. 

• Cybersecurity, risk management, and data protection policies. 

• Software configuration. 

• Planning, executing, and overseeing IT projects. 

• Strong leadership and interpersonal skills.  

• Creative problem-solving skills to handle any issues that arise and make decisions for the good of the company’s IT infrastructure. 

Keep in mind that companies often hire from within and these are roles you can grow into as a software developer or IT professional.  

Wrap-up 

Thanks for joining us for a look behind the scenes at IMA. Let us know what roles you’d like to hear about next! 

For more information about IMA and our services, check out our website or email us at info@imaltd.com.