So I’ve mostly spent my career working for consulting firms of various sizes and types. I also have a background in civil engineering (and an MBA). So for most of my early career, my concept of a “project manager” was some very senior engineer or engagement manager or other expert with lots of experience who led a team in the completion of a particular project.
Recently, mostly for the fuck of it and to put it on my resume, I obtained a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.
Since obtaining that certification, I am now constantly spammed by Indian recruiters for short term contracts for project managers in random locations around the country.
More than that, the people I meet who are PMPs don’t seem particularly educated or bright. More than that, they seem like they don’t actually DO anything in their role. The Team Lead actually leads the team. The software architect or other SME actually knows the material. The functional managers actually handle the employees. The account manager manages the client relationship. All I see most project managers doing is taking meeting minutes, filling out Gantt charts and writing status reports. I mean that crap is useful helping to run a project. But I never imagined that that would be ALL someone actually does.
In fact, companies now have entire “PMO” or “delivery” teams of project managers who basically just track projects.
Like I said, I always sort of pictured a “project manager” as a really senior guy with a lot of expertise who ran large, complex projects (like designing software or building a bridge). Now it seems like the project manager role feels like some sort of glorified admin assistant with a cert filling out bullshit paperwork.
I work as a contract maintenance planner/scheduler and the majority of project managers I have run into are more babysitters than anything else. Since companies assemble diverse groups of people from all over the country (and sometimes the world) they frequently need someone to “ride herd” over them. Or to at least make certain that the contractors don’t rob the client too much (long lunches,watching videos online,etc)
That’s where the project manager comes into play, in my experience.
Unfortunately, most people get the job simply because they put “project manager” on their resume or the “friend of a friend” method. Most of them who I have encountered rarely know project management in-depth and they basically regurgitate whatever they learned in a class or whatever the person who they think is the “smartest” tells them.
Some advice: If you aren’t looking for full-time work, there are plenty of contract positions open around the country for people with project management/project controls experience. The jobs extremely well (often with high rates of per diem) and the majority aren’t that difficult.
The most difficult part seems to be molding a group of individuals into an effective team. So far only one of the project managers I met could do this; and he left the project for higher paying working in the Gulf after three months.
I can tell you that I’ve had quite a few “PMs” who were actually what you called an “Account Manager”; if and when they were involved with the client, it was to tell them it was all gonna be rainbows and unicorns oh yeah, but they were not involved in making sure that the team got the access and information needed, or in establishing needed collaborations and making sure those worked correctly. Their idea of “fighting scope creep” was “just do it, stop being negative”.
I’ve also had others who were the team’s knight in dented armor when it came to fighting scope creep or unreasonable demands, who considered that it was their job to make ours easier, and did so.
And I can tell you that in 12 years in consulting, I’ve had both kinds on and off. Each new project, one of the questions is “will the manager be an actual manager or a pants-down salesman?”
I’ve been a Project Manager, Program Manager, and Product Manager. The actual jobs have had some overlap, some complete differences, and it really depends on the hierarchy of the company.
Some project managers are more project coordinators. Some are project managers. Some have a lot of authority over a project, some are hired to set up meetings and keep project documentation. It REALLY depends on the organization - to some extent the PM - but a PM who LEADS will get kicked out of an organization where the power sits elsewhere and the PM is supposed to ORGANIZE. Likewise, in an organization where PMs are supposed to be running a multimillion dollar project, if all they do is set up meetings and ask team members for status - they’ll find themselves out of work.
If you are going to work as a PM, especially in a consulting environment, its helpful to know what sort of PM you are supposed to be (and admit it if the job is either above your capabilities, or they’d be better off finding someone at a lower rate). If you are hiring a PM, its important to get a feel for if the PM you are hiring is skilled appropriately for the type of PM your company hires.
And yes, some PMs are idiots - I’ve worked with MANY idiots.
As a technical project lead, I have to take issue with your implication that PMs were ever useful
as you mentioned, I do know a couple places that split the basic job function into “Project manager” for low level chart fillers, and “Delivery lead” for the people who know what they are doing enough to have responsibility.
I always find the main questions are:
“Who will actually make sure this shit gets done?”
“Who actually knows how to do this shit?”
“Who actually cares if I stop submitting status updates?”
Generally the power always sits elsewhere. PMs are rarely functional managers.
It depends on the organization and the particular position.
Some are secretaries, some are conductors, some are babysitters.
I definitely find a good project manager pretty useful, especially working in tech where we’re all obsessive geeks, prone to rabbit holes
Even if they’re basically secretaries. Somebody needs to put those ToDo’s in Basecamp. And make sure that they get done. And run the morning scrum. And live and breathe all that productivity shit that actually works, especially if you live and breathe it. And yes, even be a bit anal about procedures and deadlines.
Basically you want someone who got A’s by taking neat notes and studying diligently.
I worked on a project costing hundreds of millions of dollars which had a project management team. In no way were they technical leads - they knew nothing about the technology and weren’t supposed to. I suspect they tracked the budget, I know they tracked milestones and hours worked and tried to predict when the project was over. As a manager I had to make sure my team entered what they did.
The project was a famous disaster (I got out long before it crashed) but it wasn’t the PMs fault. Management has to have the guts to admit they are late.
I suspect projects doing well know things for the nth time have better success with this, but I’ve never worked on one of them.
Thank Og.
I’ve been with the company 6 years, coming from the engineering group (we’re a niche construction company with worldwide projects).
My position as Project Manager for this company: I’ve been given a project in a foreign country, with an as-sold budget and schedule. It is my responsibility to assemble a team to get the project done within my schedule and within my budget.
So, I pretty much wear a lot hats (manager, HR, engineer, foreman).
Having said all that, I agree with the OP. The PM role in a lot of companies is nothing more than being a go-between for the Client and the Company, or worse, someone who endlessly tracks everything imaginable (hours, costs, resources, schedule, etc.). For that reason, if I were ever to be looking for another job, I’d be hesitant to say that what I currently do is Project Management. Actually, I’m not really sure what I’d call it.
Your quote above that I made bold is so true. Somehow, someway, PM became something that is frankly useless. If you have a project, there needs to be one person at the top of it all who can make any decision necessary to further the project. How is it that the PM role is instead so often one of being just a babysitter?
The project manager shouldn’t be the decision maker - that should be someone very senior on the customer side, or possibly a committee or board.
A PM should only implement decisions that have already been laid out as options in advance (i.e. foreseen as risks with mitigation plans, or defined as tolerances in budgets or descriptions of the delivered product, etc).
If something comes up in a project that is outside of what has already been planned, the job of a PM is to get someone else to make a decision on what to do (which may include stopping the project).
This must be one of the rare instances where Australia is way ahead of the curve. When I was involved in system development work many years ago the Project Manager was the guy who lied at the the project meetings about how the project was going. He was also, later on, the guy with the explanations, excuses and pointing finger. I only met one who seemd any good and his project ended up the worst product I ever did QA on.
In my experience working on software development projects, the primary job skill of project managers is expertise in the Microsoft Project software and whatever time management software is currently believed to be the answer to all time tracking and predicting problems. They manage nothing.
Individual effort is managed by the supervisors of the individual contributors. That consists mainly of handing out assignments. In some cases the supervisors also follow up with programmers concerning assignment deadlines, but often that is done by the PMs. Overall, I would say that projects aren’t managed at all. What is managed is the project plan.
I’ve been an IT project manager for 18 years and when my coworkers complain about how hard it is to get functional managers to commit resources or to get people to do their tasks I remind them if it was easy we’d be out of a job.
I have a job because grown people act like kindergarten students who can’t find their way to restroom without someone holding their hands.
I love project teams who actually do what they need to in order to deliver because then I have time to surf the internet and play games but in reality most project teams have more work assigned than they can reasonably complete with no clear direction on priority. He who screams loudest or bribes the best actually gets things done so I spend my days soothing egos and begging for people to complete tasks for my projects.
In a perfect world there would be no actual need for project managers but we are far far from that nirvana.
