Proc. of the 8 th International Conference on Engineering and Emerging Technologies (ICEET) 27-28 October 2022, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 978-1-6654-9106–8/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE Importance of effective delegation in a startup or small-scale IT organizations T.D.B Weerasinghe Chartered Computer Engineer, Senior Member of IEEE Operations Manager Austal Ships Pty Ltd Perth, Australia ORCID: 0000-0003-3932-4566 Abstract—Effective Delegation is a management technique that is used to improve productivity and efficiency in an organization. It can be considered as a concept of distributing workload and authority among responsible stakeholders within an organization. It is important to get the maximum out of the resources in an organization. Hence the distribution of work or tasks and at the same time sharing the responsibility and authority is essential [1]. In a start-up, the most important aspect is to have an inaugural hierarchy that can drive the initiative as well as trust each layer in the line of command and share tasks and obligations effectively. Especially in the IT industry, where the software, firmware and hardware project deliveries are the utmost important phenomena, the effectiveness in delegation has a major role to play. Keywords—delegation, management, start-ups. I. INTRODUCTION Delegation of responsibility and authority is a management mechanism to achieve organizational goals [2]. This popular management technique is used not only in well-established organizations but also in start-ups to seeing things done during a stipulated time period with desired quality. As per my own experience with the previous startup that I was employed, it was clearly obvious that effective delegation of responsibility and authority is highly productive and successful. If multiple tasks can be accomplished by a single man, throughout a reasonable timeframe then effective delegation is not necessarily needed. No it is not practical to achieve organizational success using one or two people. In an IT organization the nature of work has a lot of diversity. In a software development firm, there are several departments. As an example, those can be divided into Business System Analytics, Software Development, Software Testing and Quality Assurance, Human Resources, Finance and Accounting. Even in a startup we can see this diversity. Hence the usage of effective delegation is important to save time, increase profit, reduce individual work stress, boost creativity, to do more work and so on. [3] Moreover, offering responsibility opens more windows for job autonomy and induces much improved performance of everyone. A pivotal first step in effective delegation can be regarded as effective leadership which is also a fundamental aspect of overall organizational performance [8]. An “IT startup” can be considered as a new or fresh organization that uses information technology as their preliminary business domain. IT Startups develop new IT products and services [4]. They can be software development firms, network and systems engineering firms, cyber security firms and so on. According to Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM), there are more than 100 start-ups in Sri Lanka, by 2016[4]. Out of that most are IT startups. In a startup, the remarkable necessity is to grow the start-up into an established enterprise in a reasonable time frame. For that the startup needs to have a strong team with visionary leaders. With visionary leaders’ effective delegation of responsibility and authority make the task force achievable in given deadlines. II. DELEGATION As described in the Abstract, “Delegation” can be regarded as sharing and distributing work tasks among the responsible stakeholders within an organization. Moreover, a way of promoting staff is by exposing faith on them via delegation. Effective delegation gives benefits in both ways. It is up to the supervisor or lead to recognize and observe the real capabilities of his or her subordinates. To get the work accomplished, the said staff also should have the delegated authority. Hence effective delegation autonomously become one of the pivotal job functions of a leader or manager.[7]