So IOW, “taking the specs from the customer to the engineers”?
90% of project management is checklists.
Exactly. Someone who is absolutely useless can be absolutely useless in any field without having to re-tool their uselessness.
So here’s a question. I want to have a complex piece of software developed. Or building constructed. What is the name of the person’s job/role who is ultimately responsible for making sure that gets done?
I used to work for a consulting firm where client project teams were typically organized under hierarchies of directors, engagement managers, sr and jr consultants. Everyone was a subject matter expert. But the consultants did the work. The more experienced managers organized it. The directors managed the client relationship and made sure the team had all the resource they needed.
One day we hired a PMP certified project manager. Presumably to help us improve our processes. She was absolutely useless. She didn’t understand the technology or the processes or the technical challenges. So mostly she did nothing but create the monthly utilization reports and hold self-aggrandizing meetings about what the PMI was.
Now that I am in a different consulting firm where I am part of a dedicated PMO, it seems to me the answer to every problem is “add more project management oversight”. The problem is adding additional layers of reporting does not solve the problem if the functional department managers who actually sell and estimate the work, prioritize projects, assign resources and make hiring, firing and training decisions don’t ever act on them. Probably why all our projects go months over budget.
So basically, I can’t decide if project management itself is useless, or if it is made useless by creating a role that is “responsible” for the delivery of a project, but lacks the means to affect that delivery in any real way.
That might not be a company you want to work for then. Good companies tend to have good recruiting programs. They tend to know which schools to hire out of and which ones are out of their league.
In real estate development and construction, Project Manager is a very clearly defined and important role. A little different from a PM in the consulting world, but there you go.
All jokes about PM’s aside, the role is not what it once was.
When I started out in my career track (IT), a good PM was senior SME who came up through the ranks of a company or had experience with that specific system or subject. But things quickly changed in the 90’s and not for the better. Now it’s anybody who can use MS Project and harrangue people into complete tasks by a specific date on the project schedule. Don’t get me wrong. Tracking tasks and having them completed on time is a valuable role of a PM. As is managing senior management and customer expectations. But more and more I’ve seen the PM role turn into a singularly focused task master that churns out reports and manages based on PMO/PMI principals rather than a fundamental understanding of what his/her team is producing and why.
In other words, PM’s that are also SME have a fundamental understand of the project and the complexities involved. Combine that with good people skills, communication skills, clear understanding of the goals and objectives, and you have a competent project manager. But more often than not, it’s just a consultant they hire that comes in with some project reporting templates and the sole objective of managing to the schedule. A one size fits all solution. So quality suffers, moral suffers, expectations are not met and 4-6 weeks are spent on post implementation assessments of where things went wrong and how they could go better next time. Which are subsequently ignored and repeated in the next project.
“Project manager” can be a bullshit job. I have a good friend over here, a Brit, who is a project manager for a local translation/software-localization company, and he works damned hard. But an old high-school buddy ended up a project manager for a succession of companies in Oklahoma, and I really couldn’t tell you what he was supposed to be doing.
I’ve got a copy of the PMBOK somewhere; to give you the exact quote I’d need to dig it out, but I couldn’t get past the first few pages because it said something along the lines of “project management got invented ni 1958”.*
No, project management got invented before humans got out of Africa, the first time the chief said “I want [this]. You, make sure it gets done”. The pyramids wouldn’t have gotten built without someone managing the projects, nor would all those roads and bridges and acqueducts and cathedrals and… heck, even the most humble toolshed will be built better and faster if the work is directed by someone whose head is screwed on straight.
It is an important task (which may or may not be its own position), but any task can be made useless when thrown to someone who either doesn’t know his head from his ass or doesn’t have the means to actually perform the job.
Now that I have a PDF editor that lets me make notes and I’m between projects, one of the pieces of homework I’ve set for myself is digging that brick out and red-penciling it… mwahahaha! (Hey, it seems to be about the only way I’ll be able to read it without throwing the computer against the wall, and I need it for work). Oh, and the translation blows goats.
I work in big-pharma and we have a strict and formal protocol for all projects. They all require a project manager. I have an unusual combo job that is classified as an engineer, operations expert, systems administrator and Subject Matter Expert in many areas. That means that I serve many if not most roles by myself on many projects.
I have worked with a number of Project Managers over the years and it creates a weird dynamic. I am the one that actually knows what to do and how to execute it. I also make all the technical and business decisions along with my boss who is an engineer. However, we have to have a Project Manager who is nominally ‘in charge’ of every project even though they don’t make any real decisions or even necessarily know that much about what we are doing.
The Project Managers have a couple of useful roles that I can tell:
The bureaucracy is incredible in my company so a good one needs to be great at filling out forms and knowing how to cut through the red-tape. That is important for things like funding and it certainly isn’t something I am interested in doing even though I am usually the one that helps train every new one that comes along. They can have those tasks as soon as they are ready.
Most of ours are transient contractors. They ‘own’ the project and are responsible for its success. I took offense at that when I first started because I was the one doing all the real work and making the decisions but then I realized it is set up that way for a reason. We have a professional fall-guy if things go horribly wrong and I won’t get the blame. That has never happened on any of my projects. They all work and project managers love working with me because they don’t have to do or understand much of anything. However, the scape-goat is pre-identified if it ever comes up and I won’t be the one who gets canned for it.
I does get irritating because I know that most of them make more than I do and they don’t do as much. I have thought about becoming a Project Manager myself a few times until I realized that filling out paperwork and BS’ing with people is about my least favorite thing to do in the world just below pumping out septic tanks. They can have that job for whatever money they can con someone into giving them.
That’s why I don’t love many PMs all that much. They go to meetings when everything is going well(thanks to my team) and tell all the execs that’s It’s all shiny and show their little spread sheets and power points and stuff.
However they very seldom understand what is really going on, so when there is a problem I have to go and explain what happened, while they hide in the background. And when the shit really hit’s the fan the PM changes a box to red and goes home, while me and my team start working 60 -100 hours weeks to get it done.
So every year, every PM gets higher ratings than every tech lead, they are set up to take the credit, and we are set up to take the blame. :mad:
And the most ridiculous thing is that all these fancy work-plans and calendars and swimlanes and shit that becomes the Bible of success or failure, is all based on numbers that I fucking made up before I had final requirements!
That’s always one of the problems with any project. You can’t make an accurate plan until you know the requirements. But you won’t know the requirements until you are into the project. And a lot of times, the budget and timeline are set by some executive or sales person based on what he thinks it should be to make his numbers come up right.
I am so glad I never took that PMP test…
My boss kept pushing and pushing, telling me how important it is to landing big projects. I am sure it is, but in my little niche there aren’t any big projects. My boss retired and the company is contracting, PMP isn’t going to help anyone now and I am so glad I didn’t waste my time.
For a large project (say one with more than 10 people with a single goal) PM is potentially a good idea. Not my world. I manage 17 people. And 17 projects. Not a good use of PM.
What waste of time? It took me like 4 weeks to prepare for the PMP exam and I didn’t even need to buy that dumb PMBOK book.
I suppose it depends on the type of work they are doing. If it’s just 17 people doing the tasks of their job, then no. They need a manager, not a project or program manager.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the concept of having a project manager who oversees the completion of some objective as a bad idea. In fact I think it’s necessary. If you’re building a dam or designing a new jet fighter for Lockheed-Martin or something. Even building software or reengineering a business process. But in each of those cases, those projects should be managed by an experienced professional with deep knowledge of those technologies and industries.
But I think the concept of a “professional manager”, someone who only has “leadership” and “management” skills that are interchangeable in any industry or tech is bullshit. Kind of like “out of the box thinking”, hiring “young enthusiastic minds” because of their “enthusiasm and fresh perspective” or even the mythos of the “college drop out who becomes startup millionaire” is bullshit. It’s just a way for people who don’t really know how to do anything to justify their bloated salaries and professional existence.
Call me old fashioned, but I still think the way you be allowed to run something is to get some experience with a piece of it, learn more about that thing, show aptitude, get responsibility for a larger piece and so on.
For example, my company put me in charge on delivering a web site with our creative digital agency. I straight told them. “I don’t know jack shit about delivering a creative project. My education is business and engineering. My PM training was about the shaping of steel and stone through the application of intense heat, relentless pressure and shear force of will! Not facilitating a design session to discuss the best shade of blue to use on a site header!”
If your new boss is willing to give you time and training, go for it. Regardless of if its actually useful in the ‘real world’ - it is really useful on a resume. Keeping it up isn’t a huge deal - most of my PDUs are free webinars and reading a book or two a year. The test isn’t hard. (And the PMBOK book ISuseless).
I took a five day boot camp and passed the test on Saturday the moment the company I was working for had a few training dollars (I also got ITIL certified, another bullshit cert, but the certification is printing money in terms of an IT resume if you do operations management, which is what I’ve tended to do for the past decade.)
There are LOTS of bullshit jobs. PM is one that is often a bullshit job, but pays pretty well and there is demand. We can’t all be ER doctors and save lives. If your company is contracting and you are managing very small projects and operational work, you may never use half of what you have to learn for a PMP (in my experience, you seldom use it all anyway - there is now a huge bit on contracts and purchasing - I’ve done most of my work for big corporations - Legal and Sourcing take care of that - the PM gets stuck with the results and if there are problems - refers them back to Legal and Sourcing) - but you’ll use those letters on your resume.
Last PM I worked with at this company pretty much did nothing but send out emails bothering people, and scheduling meetings over people’s lunch hours. God I hated that shit.
Up until the lunchtime meetings thing, I was beginning to wonder if I’d wandered into the wrong uinverse.
In my world, Project Management is a valid, useful skill - and Project Managers make a positive difference to the delivery of actual stuff.
But yeah, lunchtime meetings. I think it’s because they’re trying to book a meeting Real Soon, and the number of different people invited usually means that lunchtime will be the most open slot in many of their calendars.
I put a private recurring appointment in my Outlook calendar so it doesn’t look ‘available’.
Sure, the ability to lead and organize the delivery of a project is an important skill.
In my world (where I am one of the most senior PMs in our group), we are basically unfortunate assholes who get stuck trying to keep our clients from loosing their shit when our projects spiral out of control. An unfortunate side effect of being charged with overall responsibility to deliver a project with little control over the scope, budget, timeline, staff, deliverables or methodology.
