Is "project manager" now a bullshit job?

And I agree, but it also cracks me up to hear you say it, given how many consultants I know who got hired into consulting straight out of college, got slotted into this or that module without any regard to their interests and now explain to people how to do things they don’t comprehend themselves. It’s a very similar situation.

There’s some jobs which simply should never be something you can get without experience in other fields, damnit.

ETA: Mangetout, don’t they have the decency to make them lunch meetings? I’ve had people do that and when they dared complain that I took my sandwich out and started biting away I asked “would you rather I faint?” They usually would rather not :stuck_out_tongue:

In all fairness, most of the work those junior consultants are doing is crunching numbers in spreadsheets or putting together Powerpoint decks. But otherwise, you are correct. Typically we just view them as “staff” or “resources”. Interchangeable cogs we can just throw on any project that supports their bill rate. But typically at senior levels you are supposed to have developed a particular industry or practice specialty.

Yes it takes planning and coordinating skill and knowledge, not technical or IT skills. Replace a few nouns in this excellent definition of the typical project manager and you have a “Wedding Planner.” Or a “party organizer”, or any “event coordinator” position, and that by itself would be fine.

What I take issue with is the elevated or cross-over status that the term “Project Manager” carries. Especially in the IT field.

It’s that word “manager” in there so that must mean Management-level quality right?? As a result, the Project Manager is viewed organizationally as at least equivalent if not superior to a “Real” Manager.

Want to someday be a big shot Director or some other elevated title with a nice cozy office?? Don’t waste your time being technically competent, or as the previous posted said getting a high profile MBA… no, just start out as a Project Manager and slide your way into an organization’s culture and someday you’re a mid level executive!

All this career potential with no more than the skills and knowledge required to put on a Chili Cook-off.

Other major questions that crop up frequently are:

“How can I make this shit smell better?”
“How can I make this shit taste better?”
“Who shit all over my deliverables?”
“Why can’t these dumb-shits remember to submit their timesheets by 5 PM on Friday?”

That is rarely the case in any organization I’ve seen. In most places, “project manager” is not a “functional manager” like a director or other executive. Or they have a specific career track like “delivery” or ultimately reporting up to or becoming the Chief Operating Officer.

Or sometimes a functional manager becomes a “project manager” for a particular project.

The technical equivalent for what you describe is often referred to as an “architect” or “SME” and may ultimately report to or become a Chief Technology Officer.

That is true for the mega-corp I consult for as well. We get new project managers all the time. The vast majority are very attractive and aggressive youngish men although we have had a few women as well. They are supposed to be the ‘face’ for the project. They all work very hard and all of them I have worked with have been competent at filling out all of the endless amount of red-tape plus organizing meetings and corralling people. However, they don’t make any real decisions on their own. The real decisions are done by me and my boss and we just tell them what to say.

It is almost like being a corporate politician. I have been offered project management positions myself a few times but was also advised not to take them if I want longevity because they are considered to be expendable and have to be the professional scape-goat if anything goes wrong. I hate paperwork more than anything and I value real expertise rather than than salesmanship so I don’t think it will ever be a viable position for me although it does require smarts, a weird mix of skills and pays very well.

Yes companies hire PMs, usually only because the existing managers do not understand well enough what they’re working with to manage the minutia, tech is a good example of this.

Most of these managers hire PMs in hope that they’ll “make everything and everyone work.” … but there’s just one problem, they don’t have any actual power to do this, and everyone they’re supposed to make work knows this.

So engineers consider them an redundant useless role, and blow them off accordingly. Management doesn’t want to hear from them that there “engineers don’t work” or that “they should back them up.” because the managers are pissed their PM can’t win a battle when they’re sent in naked and unarmed.

So PMs are left with playing one person against another, as their prime way of ensuring projects stay on track. They often graft themselves onto buy-the-tape methodologies like AGILE, a hotbed of side stepping difficult tasks in favor of easy ones - engineers love it! And lame tacts like standing meeting to harass publically shame anyone who isn’t dreaming of work every night.

Advancement is virtually nil, unlike other jobs you really aren’t developing any new or valuable skills, anyone can be a bean counting nag snitch, and you’ll get an according level of thanks. So dead end ville.

This will probably sound misogynist, but really the people that I’ve seen function best as tech PMs are younger women, because most of the engineers are men, and they will overlook viewing them as a useless role in favor of having a pretty face to talk to.

Design people will usually step on PMs too, because they tend to essentially be loud mouth, self promoting sales people who know photoshop, and don’t like anyone with the title of manager acting as a go-between, because it doubles the amount of self-aggrandizing pitches they have to do on a daily basis.

So yeah, it would be a good “gig” for a colegiate thinking young person who’s working on getting somewhere else in life.

PMP certs are like most certs, if you’re not the person who thought up certifying people, you should avoid it.

Depends what you mean by “best”. I have found most women PMs to be mostly useless because they don’t know the tech and being pretty doesn’t make the project go faster. So usually they are relegated to note takers and minutes keepers.

Really ex-jock frat guys make the best PMs. Mostly due to their nerd beating skills!

Design people tend to be prima donna creatives who don’t comprehend deadlines.
I’m coming to the conclusions that most jobs in corporate America are bullshit. I’m consulting for a big bank and as far as I can tell, the lowest title is “Associate Vice President” and she’s basically my admin. There’s no one who actually does real work any more. It’s all outsourced or contracted out.

PM’ing is a valid skillset to help keep projects moving forward, particuarly those projects that require timed and coordinated input and deliverables from various departments within the company that don’t normally work together.

It’s also useful for handling all of the adminstrivia associated with a project.

That said, there are good PMs, who keep very close track of what’s going on, and who make it a point to understand what is going on and why. They help remove blocks and can help present the need to get additional resources/coordinate resource availability to management. These generally have some sort of background in their field.

And then there are the glorified note-takers and babysitters who say things like, “I’m not technical”. :smack: I even worked with one PM who didn’t take notes and expected project members to work out inter-departmental issues and blocks on their own, without any intervention from him. Even when said blocks jeopardized the project. He scheduled meetings and completed spreadsheets. That’s it. (He’s horrible, and he’s still at my company. I hope my current project isn’t given to him.)

I work in IT also, and my experience in a very large software development project was like this. The group of project managers collected data and did presentations on the status of the project. But it was the head of the department who was actually in charge of the project in terms of allocating funding and staffing. The project manager group were technical people, but they didn’t do anything technical while they were in the group. I believe their task was a glorified book-keeping job, because none in the project management group directly had an impact on the project. It seemed like a waste of human resources to have engineers, many with masters degrees doing a task which didn’t require their skill level. They would spend their time talk with developers in other groups asking for dates when items would or wouldn’t be completed. But if the project was behind schedule, no one from the program management group did anything about it, it was up to the head of the department to do that.

But the job title still said “Project Manager” when they didn’t manage people or the project.

I have the expectations of the OP, that someone who is called a Project Manager actually is responsible for the smooth running and outcome of the project. He or she would be involved with understanding every part of the project and be able to determine if milestones were met and if needed would be able to help determine where the problems were in development and actually assign people to do different tasks. If there were changes asked for in the project, the PM would be able to say what the cost and impact on the schedule would be.

On the other hand, I’m on a project without any project management to speak of, and that doesn’t make it good. They just figured out there is going to be a serious resource constraint - something a PM should have seen a month ago.

A PM can’t fly your plane - but she might be able to tell you that you are in a nosedive and really should think about pulling out of it.

The place I work for now doesn’t believe in project management and boy howdy can I see the reason why PM’s are valuable! Here is my experience with our projects so far without any project managers:

  1. Nobody plans for contingencies, so for example one of my projects got completely halted and I lost my developers to other projects while we waited for a third party vendor to fix issues on their end.

  2. Each team does their work and they do it well. But there’s no coordination between the teams. So even though we have an SDLC we’re supposed to use, it’s falling flat on it’s face. For example, we’re supposed to get executive approval on business cases before we build stuff. One of my projects got all the way to QA before the business case was approved. (Makes me wonder what would happen if the executive team denied the business case and said “nah, we don’t want to build this”!)

  3. Poor communication between teams. Early in one project, the IT manager said his people would sit in on my requirements gathering meetings with users “just to listen in”. I had no problem with it, but before I knew it, the developers were cutting code. A few weeks later, the dev lead told me that they were dropping to QA “this Friday” even though my requirements were not complete. I was told that when I finished the requirements, I should submit a change order.

They scoff at me for suggesting that project management would be a nice thing to have.

If everyone does what they are supposed to do, on time, and communicates properly, then there is no reason to have a PM. PMs add value when they are keeping track of things and addressing roadblocks, as well as escalating issues and risks when they appear - essentially, a PM should be doing activities that no one else can do or wants to do. If a PM is on the critical path of a project, then something is wrong.

They should be responsible for ensuring the project is predictable and under control, and a good PM can minimize drama. PMs should possess excellent communication skills - most of the job is about communication, not technical (altho a technical background can be helpful). The job is about 90% communication skills, and about 10% technical skills.

Sounds like some posters here have had to deal with check-box PMs. I know that can be dreadful - they are not adding value, and get in the way of real work. Knowing what PM deliverables are appropriate (Charter, work plan, roles and responsibilities, etc.) to create is critical to success - following a script and not knowing what the project is all about and why it is needed by the business does not help. Good PMs will work hard to build rapport with project teams in matrix environments. Again - more soft skills and communication is needed than technical chops.

PM got a bad name from places that have people say they are doing PM, but in reality all they do is track the project in a tool like Microsoft Project but don’t add any value to the work. PM without adding management is useless. Then there are people who don’t like PM even when it’s done properly because they can’t handle answering questions about schedules and meeting milestones about their work. I’ve seen those types of people and their response to anything is “It will be done, when I’m finished with it”. Or they blame the lack of commitment to any schedule because they don’t have information from other sources which is a bogus answer in most cases.

Good project management is a combination of tracking the project in an application like Microsoft Project and actually managing the project. The other part of good PM is to learn from the process and how to improve it for the next project. Too often the same mistakes are repeated from one project to another and the popular excuse is “That’s the way it is done”.

As an ex-PM on several projects, this is key. No team will listen or commit to anything unless there is a strong management bat to swing.

IMO, a key role of the PM is to have a direct break of the chain-of-command to a level higher than even the bosses of the project teams. The bottom management and functional teams don’t care if a chart metric flips from green to red.

What was most successful to me was to identify a high-up manager or exec, hook his/her ear with the importance of the project and the consequences of failure to the company’s value, and report progress to the big boss in the presence of the lower stakeholder managers. Suddenly, red items got instant action and contingency plans, green items got accolades and morale boosts, and adorable animated woodland creatures materialized around the cubicles singing songs in the sunbeams.

Suddenly I’m no longer asking “Why is contract X still held for signature?” every week for 6 months. I’m reporting “Contract X was signed on Week 1…next!” Nothing is more schadenfreude than getting to watch managers twist in the wind when their hem and haw action-dodging gets recognized as the BS it is by an exec who knows the game better than they do. :smiley:

Geez… sounds like I’d be terrific at it. Ex-jock, went to a private prep school (not in a frat in college though). Have serious technical chops from college and the first decade of my career. And… have worked as a BA for a good while now.

Problem is, I don’t want to be a PM. Mostly because I don’t deal well with the bullshit that’s their stock in trade; being responsible with no actual authority and dealing with all the administrative crap and peripheral BS of the projects, without actually having anything concrete to do with the actual project. I get enough of that in the BA role without much of the actual responsibility.

Thankfully, my company views PMs and BAs as being different billets in the same pay grade (to use military terms), so it’s not like I’m giving up serious pay to be a BA instead of a PM. I’m just choosing to be the bridge between the techies and the business types, instead of being the guy who coordinates everything and deals with the administrative crap.

Your industry is not the world. In the place I visited this week, they had Project Managers but no such position as a “team lead.” “Project Manager” means different things in different companies.

I understand why you say this, but in real life the result would be that the PM gets told absolutely nothing about what is really going on, and anyone who does tell her something gets whacked next raise time.

Direct to the ear of the top manager of the project, yes. PMs usually report to the top manager. And as for management being PMs, the manager of a big project has a lot more to do than collecting how far everyone has gotten on their goals. That person doing PM would be a waste of an expensive resource.

I’ve seen Team Lead and Project Lead and Project Manager titles in the same organization doing the same job. Managers fall in love with terminology. As others have said, the only thing to do is ask “what does that position do.”

This week, my boss went to find a PM for the project that I’ve been acting as PM on. I’m a clinical analyst, not a PM, but had some PM-ish skills from prior jobs. And we found that the company dropped having a full-time PMO.

It’s an IT company, FFS, but we don’t have a PMO. :smack:

But here’s a bonus; the PM I referred to in my previous post actually told my boss that admin-type work isn’t what he does.

When my boss told me this, I laughed. Snickered, actually, to convey that he’d been bullshitted (bullshat?). Then I explained exactly what Annoying Bald Ironman PM Dude Who Doesn’t Take Notes and Doesn’t Do Admin Tasks *actually did *when he was PM for a different project I was on. Which was, put out a bunch of spreadsheets and schedule/lead meetings. Glorified admin tasks. And I gave him a rundown of Annoying Bald Ironman PM Dude’s weaknesses (not stepping in to get management to remove roadblocks, expecting team members to “handle” roadblocks themselves, etc). He does all the admin crap, but not so much the actual tasks that PMs are really helpful for.

Anyway, they’re still trying to get a PM. We need one. But I’d prefer one who’s an “old school” PM, as I think of them, not some dude just wanting to check off tasks.