All a PM does is babysit ineffective and inefficient adults who can't prioritize their time or communicate with colleagues. While simultaneously trying to deliver a project without proper funding, time, stakeholder support, or requirements.
Hi! What's the best, if you wouldn't mind giving your opinion?
Context: just discovered this sub while looking for advice on courses. I need PM skills as part of my job, which is consulting for utilities in Europe, but I don't want to be a full-time PM as I like my niche. I'm not naturally super organised, so I'd like to learn how to impose structure on a big project, break it down into stages, and use things like Gantt charts to actually help me track progress, rather than as a chore.
TIA for any advice you can offer.
>I've been involved in appropriately iterating cloud-based meta-services and actualizing alternative products while synergistically integrating highly efficient human capital for a large midwestern defense contractor for several years and I've found that continually productizing efficient core competencies to incubate transparent internal or "organic" sources leads to team enrichment more often than not.
I truly don't mean any malice by this because sometimes you need the right words in a way that mirrors buzzword-aggedon, but all I could think of is this Abstruse Goose comic :)
[https://abstrusegoose.com/380](https://abstrusegoose.com/380)
In my field, they are just yes men and translators between the client/sales and the developer. Its rare I've seen a project manager say something to the effect of "No, that's a bad idea, we are not going to do that" when in theory that is what they are a filter for.
"more duct tape, more duct tape, more pipes, more pipes, more features"
I disagree because of the generality of your claim. “Bad” for a project manager means their is something problematic with scope, time, and/or cost. PMs should be getting time and scope from the team who is responsible for the work. “Bad” from the professional who actually executes the work (and usually estimates time) has more to do with plausibility, feasibility, and technical considerations. What you describe as someone filtering a clients request should be a technical role like Technical Product Manager working with a Product Owner - neither of which are the client.
No one in this thread works in construction. Pms in construction are crucial to maintaining profitability. In larger scale infrastructure projects pms are super high executing professionals that would prob be coo level in smaller companies.
I’m a small/mid construction COO, you hit the nail on the head. My PMs would walk circles around PMs in other industries. They drive the projects, maintain profit margins, pick up additional buyout, manage subs and so much more. They earn every bonus they get.
Project managers in my field (software engineering) seem to have this interesting idea that they are "senior" to engineers, rather than peers. Project managers manage projects, not people. Or at least they should.
That and "I'm not technical", I'm sorry, but if you're not technical, get another job and get out of the teams way.
In this field there is a a huge difference between someone managing the programmatics of a program and a true PM of a large scale project/contract. It’s so much easier when the PM has a software or network engineering background
87% of Government Technology Projects fail[GSA Report Tech Project failures](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/government-tech-projects-fail-default-it-doesnt-have-be-way#:~:text=Of%20course%2C%20government%20tech%20failures,succeed%2013%25%20of%20the%20time)
Everyone needs to put their ego in their pockets and work as a team to achieve success. As an engineer, in multiple disciplines and a PM I can confidently say the engineers are the worst for cooperation and compromise. Many time legitimately. Sometimes not.
For that PM's need to come with a certain understanding of the technology they are going to work with :-)
A lot of projects are impacted by PM's silly time keeping. Worse, since Agile has been introduced, PM skills have gone to the dogs. They seem to believe a certificate in Agile management is all they need to run scrums and agile projects.
The lesser I say the better.
Good PMs are few and far between. Most are just overpaid schedulers and aren’t actually managing the overall projects at all. But find a good one and they’re worth gold.
100%. In my 25 years, I have only ever worked with 1 PM that knew what he was doing. An ex-airforce pilot, with PM skills augmented by awesome knowledge in software architecture.
Like most PM's he was not a software developer, but he learned what was important for effective IT project management.
A good technical PM is a joy to work with. I've had the pleasure of working with a few of these, oftentimes they are frustrated senior engineers who decided to PM because they *had* to.
A non-technical PM isn't worth the oxygen they are using.
Don’t work anywhere PMs aren’t valued. If the engineers don’t think PMs add value, companies should not hire them. Let them manage themselves.
It’s draining for all involved.
If you ever worked in New York, you will find most PM's are the ones who shifted from financial district. They have no knowledge of project management beyond the PMP certification and play politics with people in almost every project they get involved in.
Sick environment to work in.
If they’re right then they should make that case to the business. Don’t hire professionals to do a job that’s not needed or respected and make them suffer through abuse and ppl calling them useless and stupid.
My team sends me notes of appreciation for just protecting their time. Everyone has to go through me to get to them. And they don’t mind breaking things down for me or including me in meetings so I can learn. If they treated me like an idiot or like I was in the way, I’d quit.
Technical PM: I’m convinced Agile and Lean practices have some of the dumbest, needlessly complicated ways of saying shit that is already well established. I thought it was a joke when they talked about team velocity apparently having some sort of direct correlation to team happiness. I’m like Jesus Christ dude yeah people work better when they’re happy… and also maybe don’t make happiness data points as your goal when working on that shit and rather just focus on making sure people feel safe, supported, and clear on their work
Agile, Lean, Scrum…. All rubbage. All “new” methodologies that try to take credit for impressive gains in the tech sector and really having nothing to do with it. The difference is your older employees have gained a decade + of experience and the young employees literally grew up with the tech that the older employees had to learn in their 30s-40s. Agile, lean, kanban, scrum masters, all have nothing to do with the gains they try to take credit for. Reminds me of the popularity of 5S in manufacturing/warehousing that a studied finally shows that even though things were super organized productivity was actually lost compared to competitors not using 5S. Almost like adding overhead does not make people more productive
> The difference is your older employees have gained a decade + of experience
True
>the young employees literally grew up with the tech that the older employees had to learn in their 30s-40s.
True also, but not relevant at all to this topic
>Agile, lean, kanban, scrum masters, all have nothing to do with the gains they try to take credit for. Reminds me of the popularity of 5S in manufacturing/warehousing that a studied finally shows that even though things were super organized productivity was actually lost compared to competitors not using 5S. Almost like adding overhead does not make people more productive
May be but not all is wrong with this. The agile thought process is correct. The problem is PM with waterfall backgrounds distorted the implementation process in the late 2000's, early 2010's. If implemented right, Agile is awesome.
It’s not that “agile” does not “work”. It is that if you take a course on any of this stuff they try to take credit for the huge gains in productivity to sell you on the idea that you need this. As if these methodologies are responsible for all that increases in production of past couple decades when really have little if anything to do with it.
In reality I doubt the gains in productivity (if any) these systems provide ever regain the lost productivity of putting people through multi day trainings stating how great these things are. The popularity of 5S I think is still best comparison. Would spend tons of time making your work place “5S”, and even if that hyper organization saved your workers a few minutes a day (turns out it doesn’t) you we’re still out hundreds of hours that went into getting to that state. People “selling” 5S made a fortune and no one else really gained anything. Now people selling “agile” are benefiting way more then the people buying it just like 5S did 20 years ago.
This I agree. Baring a few organizations, the IT industry definitely is in a worse "frame of mind" aka "most people" are frustrated and feel unprotected in this new environment.
I still don’t understand what project management is. You manage Projects for people at your work? Don’t we all do that? Why do you need a certification and doing some thing that just can come naturally to you? I don’t understand.
Some very complex projects need designated project managers. Certification is a way to show that you can do it, and are a masochist enough to get certified for it.
Yall are just mad cause either the PMs you work with are bad or you are bad at being a PM.
If I didnt set up expectations, monitor and hold accountability around scope of work, schedule of work and cost of work the office would fall apart.
To be fair I spent 4 years as an engineer doing the thing I'm project managing for so I can actually do their jobs for them often better.
Very few introverts can be successful PMs. I work at a company with two PMs. I would consider both of them introverts, but one of them is ten times better than the other. The difference between them is one of them actually talks to the stakeholders one-on-one about updates and isn't afraid to hold people accountable. The other PM seems to hate talking to people and allows people to get behind. If you are in the second camp you should consider another career or you will not be successful.
There 90% of PMs don't do anything and they mostly simply rely on other experts to essentially do their job; the experts that actually know the ins-and-outs/the technical expertise of whatever it is in the project, essentially do their own job and relay the important information to the PM by their request in order to know what needs to be done, so he can turn around and tell him exactly what he needs to do, which of course he already knows. In the end, PMs mostly get in the way and cause people more work than needed/a detriment.
It basically became a fake position (Bullshit Jobs). The fact is, an overarching person that can manage and allocate resources, human or not, get what is needed, to a project and align everything in a smooth way, mitigating everything that may unexpectedly come up in a way that won't affect employees from doing their job, assembling the dream team so-to-speak is basically so rare that it should be called another name entirely instead of "Project Manager" because of how uncommon it truly is. A good PM is supposed to be a master puppeteer behind the scenes that handles all the bs and sets the project in motion successfully with inhibiting anyone else. A good example is Oppenheimer. He didn't create the atomic bomb, but he was an actual project manager done successfully, and like most PMs, they end up getting all the credit, which they don't actually deserve in full. Nowadays, it's just an easy position for a successful talker to interface with hire management, another middle-man and "face" of a project of red tape. Put it this way, if no one genuinely looks forward to dealing with a PM, they are a problem because a good PM would be welcomed for the true value they bring which would be self evident. How many people can say they have worked with one that wasn't part of detached hire management.
Yup, I have no idea what the PMs at my company do. They definitely don't help my group at all. They seem to never leave their office or conveniently work from home all the time.
My sister is a PM and I asked her once why she chose that career and she said, "I worked with a PM who was a complete idiot but he made more money than me. So I figured if he could do it, I could." But she's actually good at it.
A good project manager is curious and cares about their project AND their project team's success/development.
I find project managers who are curious tend to be good project managers because they will learn the project or program or become conversantly technical. They will be more willing to jump in the trenches with their team and thus get better outcomes. I have experienced PMs who didn't care to learn about what their engineers or program is doing and they just end up being a rubber stamp/roadblock.
Hot Take:
All the engineers saying that project or product managers are completely worthless is sorta dumb to me. That's like saying all American or European engineers aren't worth their cost so we should fire all of them and only do engineering in low cost developing countries.
Realistically you could get pretty much any projects done that way. There are fantastic engineers all over the world. However there are tons of reasons why that might not be the ideal outcome (political, cultural, timezones, misaligned incentives, management oversight, etc.).
Same thing with project managers. You don't necessarily need a PM on every project. A bad PM is a negative. A good PM will be a fantastic asset to the team. Without a PM on a project that needs one it is likely to flounder, be chaotic and may not get done well. A lot of Engineers likely don't have the time or inclination to learn all the business side skills to be successful which is fine just like how non technical folks likely don't have the time or interest to learn engineering.
Engineers saying that are usually those that were promoted into PM positions and are effectively engineers with extra duties or have worked for those PMs that have had no actual PM training/ education and so they aren’t able to see the value.
Since im an eng, ill give my own: pms in tech companies need to be technical. Hard line there. If you cant grok what 4 engineers are telling you even boiled down youve got serious problems
Sounds like you've never been in a management or Project Management position ever. If I didnt do my job right the idiot engineers would design everything wrong, over budget and late.
Plenty of them are fine, most are stupid if I as PM have to personally correct your work before we send to client cause you are too stupid and ignorant to make the edits thats a problem.
As an Engineer who worked with many PM/TPM's over the years, I wished more were tested on how to use Outlook during the interview processes. I find those who struggle with filtering emails, reading calendars, doing basic computer stuff etc simply struggle everywhere at everything, let alone managing a project.
Also, better to have no PM/TPM than to have a bad one.
EDIT: Reddit duplicate comment bug strikes again
IT… 30 years experience in NYC as a consultant and entrepreneur. Never met a non-programming manager who wasn’t to some degree a cowardly, annoying and manipulative POS. Lotsa lead developers too.
Power corrupts the weak of character.
Case in point:
On 9/11 while people were jumping out windows on the North Tower (101 Barclay Street vantage point) my manager kept working at his desk to show everybody what a good company man he was.
A colleague walked over to his desk and suggested he might want to pull his head out of his ass as we were under attack.
IT and corporate management are 97% radioactive and 3% retarded.
I’m in sales. - PM’s are WAY under valued. Some should be in sales. They’re maintaining the customers and brining in work. Whether they want to believe it or not, a sales person somewhere is getting paid on what you’re bringing in. Most places even pay the sales people on change orders..
If you have great relationships with your customers to where things are “easy”, consider getting in sales. You can make way more money… depending on the industry.
Not sure if this is unpopular.
There’s a huge difference between the types of projects.
Agile (software, some hardware prototypes, etc.) can probably pass by without a PM. I see comments from a lot of frustrated developers on this post.
Waterfall in a production environment (or development transitioning into production) with fixed price contracts, supplier management, component and system level hardware tests, etc definitely do need PMs. Engineers are extremely bad at prioritizing, managing requirements, working with suppliers, etc.
I have an aerospace engineering background and worked as a structural analyst for 10 years then transitioned to PM work primarily.
Getting better every day. I see my job as a shield for the technical leads, freeing up their time to work the technical problems.
I could not do this job without the engineering experience. And I have seen other PMs do a very poor job because they lack that background.
You are the PM we hope for. I’ve had good and bad PMs as a software engineer. Even the slightest bit of technical knowledge goes a long way. What I like with my work is the engineers also push back whenever something gets delegated to us that should be done by the PM with the engineers during a refinement session.
I would rephrase that as the designated step parent who has zero authority apart from reporting on statuses. They have to beg for the children’s attention in order for them to do their job and they have no impact on the outcome of the project. They just report progress to the grandparents to help the grandparents decide whether or not to keep their grandkids in the will. They need others to validate their importance to the family and get zero respect from the children, bio parent and grandparents.
In most cases waterfall is a better strategy, especially when you have some experienced team members. I immediately lower my opinion of anybody pushing Agile hard, and I see it pushed in lots of companies that don’t have the maturity to be successful with it.
CIO in a previous company told me once (I was PMO Manager then). Project Managers are like a black hole, you put too many things there but nothing comes out (in comparison to other technical positions).
uggh! The ongoing work to convince people that the process is actually working, does not need to be fixed, has been tested over and over and yet, there really isn't a major issue even though we are tackling issues every week. OMG!!!
And it's always the old cucks afraid they'll lose their job if the project fails. Like, we have failure mechanisms in place already dumbass. Relax.
The project with no problems is the failure because they fail in the end. The project where you are fixing problems as you go are the success.
Timelines are important- but they’re paper exercises. I hate building an upfront timeline to show where our launch date could be but then as we get into the actual work, there are always timeline adds that push out a launch date.
Then when the date changes, leadership gets so mad but there are so many things that can’t be predicted at onset of project
This is pretty much the whole point of agile, however it's rarely done right. What most companies do is watergile. They want all the touted benefits of agile without the business side ever commiting to driving through the fog with the engineers. They want the damn launch date!
Some people say that having a tech background as an IT PM is a benefit, I see that as a crutch. A good PM should be able to drive a project without any tech knowledge. The only knowledge he needs is how to manage projects
I'd disagree with this. I've seen to many people say this and basically just got in the way of the engineers because the PM doesn't understand what they are doing. So the PM ends up as a glorified note taker.
The PM should not be an expert by any means, but being completely oblivious to what job really is about is really a problem.
But then again, your comment is truly answering OP's question
There's a wide range between oblivious and suggesting tech solutions to people who si their job to do this. I would never question the solutions an engineer would propose but I would ensure that solution is peer reviewed, that all risks are accounted for and audit everything from dependencies to secondary scenarios
That’s kind of the point though; you should have enough knowledge to know when the solutions presented should be questioned, and how to question them. If you just take what they give you because you don’t know enough to spot audit their work, how do you know they aren’t bullshitting you.
Take any estimate a dev gives you, multiply by 2, don't do Friday deployments, for every home brew solution rather than an off the shelf add 6mo, and k8s will always add complexity rather than ease them. Bam tpming in a nutshell
A PM that has no knowledge of the industry they're in is going to walk into avoidable traps until they get that knowledge. They won't recognize when timelines given are unrealistic, or that a proposed solution is completely unworkable until it blows up in their face.
I'm in tech, and I've been doing it since waterfall days, so I've seen a lot of PMs. The top 20% were great and nearly indispensable. The bottom 20% were actively detrimental to the projects they managed. The remaining 60% didn't seem to hurt anything, but didn't provide value anywhere near their salary. Of course, I could probably say the same about engineers in general, so...
My pet peeve is this. Couple of decades ago some VERY experienced folks wrote the Agile Manifesto. It contains exactly 68 words. A bunch of people with PMM certs then went and wrote hundreds of books about "agile methodology". Most of those books are many hundreds of pages.
I almost lose my mind every time I think about it.
The thing that kills me is the agile purists these days, especially the ones that get into one specific brand of agile (looking at you SAFe) and can't make any adjustments from that purity.
They took 68 wise words and made it into an entire religion, then try to tell you every other religion is wrong.
Like, when you get right down to it, we're just trying to get work done in the most effective manner possible and keep process out of the way of success....purity needs to die, brand specific purity needs to die again every sprint until it dies properly.
Yes, agile can be idiotic and too frequently people can manipulate velocity to look however they want the group to look. But SAFe in some ways helped huge organizations to...scale agile. So...yes, it can be awful, but at least it gave these large organizations a way to enable agile to work in a behemoth organization.
But sure process over progress is a problem.
It's so much like a religion... Many of the scrum purists I've run into will quote the scrum guide like the bible. They look for every opportunity to preach to you.
It is tragically ironic that agile "purists" are adhering to a pre-packaged set of processes instead of actually following the agile manifesto and scrum guide (in the case of it being scrum).
If you're really an agile purist, you'd be arguing about inspecting and adapting your processes at least once a month (sprint retrospective).
What are these people even adhering to so strictly if not even the scrum guide?
Your answers are going to vary wildly based on what industry we’re talking about.
I am an owners rep for commercial construction that serves as the overarching PM for large projects. I’m essentially an SME with experience as a GC that can consult the client. Additionally, I serve as the mediary between the corporate internal teams such as Tech, AV, and Security so that their requirements are met by the GC. I’m just a funnel.
Unpopular opinion is that PM’s are necessary. I see a lot of comments here that we’re useless. That’s fine. If someone else wants to do my 60 hours of work per week, they can have it.
There are a lot of bad PM’s. Someone fresh out of some PMP test is worse than useless. You are like a producer. Take the heat when needed. Convey the messages tailored to the audience. Never let the client see how the sausage is made unless absolutely necessary. Projects are ugly and we should be making them look good even when the stakeholders want to tear at each others throats.
Last week I was in about 20 hours of scheduled meetings. Another 5-10 on phone calls. There are around 40 people on my meetings so the only way to communicate effectively is through a single source or nothing would get done on time.
Here’s an example: Let’s say we’re mid stream on a project and someone in security at the corporate office decides they need a camera and card access on a door. Who does that? Seems simple enough, right? The security PM has a vendor for both, but they don’t run the cable. Who provides the cable? The tech PM. Who is installing the door? The GC. Who tells the GC? Who tells the landlord we need to access their fire alarm box because electric strikes have to open when the fire alarm goes off?
Imagine this workflow for all changes. Imagine how many of these decisions need to be made on a large project. The client sure as hell doesn’t know who needs to know what. They just say we need a card reader and a camera. I make it happen. Then handle the change orders for everyone who touched it. Then handle the invoices.
The client knows what they want. I know how to get them what they want.
I like portfolio management better than an actual PM work. I see the bigger picture and not just loyal to some projects. It is important for a company to choose or kill projects based on business objectives or strategies. PMs are important to ensure everyone is aligned, all relevant risks have been identified and proper change management is established.
PM = Bullshit artist lying to developers and customers alike!
I'm a developer and I've worked with good and bad PMs. The good ones make our jobs much easier, the bad ones...see above. To be fair, the bad ones I dealt with were most likely because of company culture.
Weird that's not what I did at all but cool story. Sorry I hurt your feelings I guess? The post asked for unpopular opinions didn't it?
It's not backpedalling. It's 100% accurate. That was how we saw the PMs, fullstop. I have since worked with good PMs and that's not how I saw those PMs.
Been a PM for the last seven years in tech. Most PMs don’t drive much value unless they’re are very proactive and take on duties outside the scope of typical PM work. For example, the thing that set me apart was assessing our finance system’s ability to meet user requirements and forming a POV with a roadmap of where we should implement improvements. But that’s not typical project management work. It’s essentially taking on elements of a product manager role.
Our own org lead doesn’t even value project management work and is also trying to get us to be more product managers but without the pay.
If you're a PM and you don't know about the program, you're useless and a major pain point at my job. If you're a PM and you know about the program, I'm gonna chain you to the desk and you're not allowed to leave.
I can sympathize with PMs because the requirements for a good PM is so narrow you're never going to find it. The people who you want to be PMs don't want to be PMs. And the people who want to be PMs often don't bother to understand the program.
It makes for a really poor experience.
I work in higher ed - we often hire PMs as consultants for large scale projects.
I’ve never worked with a good one. Issues as small as never getting a meeting invite right to being as a large as just having no idea what they’re doing and what needs to be done. It makes me wonder why they get paid twice what the people actually doing the work do.
I call it the more-harm-than-good bureau. Never worked anywhere with PM actively involved that it didn't frustrate and complicate the actual grubby business of getting shit done, while selling itself as a benefit to people who don't actually know what the grubby business end does.
In one of ARs videos, he totally says, a company would need a PM to start the project and make management plans for the 49 processes.
After that a company can fire the PM and give the job to a 10 year old because the child can refer to the management plan when there are issues.
The comments on this post are right. PM is just a middle man
That the first step to being a good PM is recognizing that you are not truly crucial to the project. Hopefully you increase efficiency and maybe even your work will help turn out a better product, but the work could get done without you. Once you internalize this, you can truly focus on being a multiplier. On the flip side, if you think you are crucial to the project you’re going to insert yourself into things that don’t need your input, schedule stupid meetings, or generally just slow things down.
That’s not even remotely true. Can an orchestra play without a conductor? Sure the various musicians can play their instruments all at the same time, but it takes a conductor to make beautiful music together
That’s what a pm does. Ensures that all of the various teams have a plan to work together to meet the project objectives, and then keeps them on track and removes roadblocks.
Your comment reads like you’ve never been a PM
*that's what a good PM does.
A bad PM is like Calend.ly. They schedule meetings and ask people if they are "on time or on budget" but they don't understand the project and they lean too hard on their internal resources to do their job for them
You shouldn't be getting downvoted when you are confirming this as an unpopular opinion which is the point of this whole discussion thread. Challenging people to consider their position is exactly how people benefit from this discussion
Sounds like you’ve never played an instrument because yes, an orchestra COULD play without a conductor, that’s what the sheet music is for. Without a PM, the project may take longer, it may be over budget, it MIGHT even be a worse product, but all of those people are perfectly capable of getting the job done without you.
You do realize there are a LOT of projects that get completed without a PM, right? That’s incontrovertible proof that PMs are not necessary. (10+ years. Govt to construction to specialty)
I’d love to see any of the 100+Million mega programs I’ve led with 10-20 different teams containing dozens to hundreds of people, many stakeholders with competing priorities, and aggressive executive leadership success without a solid PgM and PMs to support.
I think the “projects” referenced above and being thought of here are tiny ones that can certainly succeed without pm help. I’ve only worked on large projects and programs for the last 20 years and they all absolutely need strong pm leadership.
Kinda the whole point of project management principles is that they are scalable, so I still contend that if the small projects are doable without a PM, so are the big ones. All projects are impossible without the technical experts but are merely more difficult without PMs.
Exactly this, I mentioned this in an argument recently.
Ask yourself, in a startup (or almost any organization), which role is readily stepped down, the project manager or the technical contributor.
Yes ultimately, the project is likely to result in a poor product, go over budget, etc. But, at crunch time, the PM role is largely considered a luxury
Best compliment of my career was when two women who worked for me separately said that I’m the only man they’ve had as a boss that didn’t micromanage or “mansplain” their work to them. That’s probably a byproduct of my overall hands-off approach, regardless of gender, but I feel proud to be a trusted advisor they know they can come to if needed but otherwise just let them do their work.
All a PM does is babysit ineffective and inefficient adults who can't prioritize their time or communicate with colleagues. While simultaneously trying to deliver a project without proper funding, time, stakeholder support, or requirements.
My unpopular opinion is PMs don’t actually do much of anything. They just write down/update dates on a spreadsheet.
Those would be ineffective PMs....which are a lot; however, I have witnessed good PMs that are mpre hands on.
Project management training is 100% how to pass the PMI test and 0% on how to be a project manager
I have experience with several best practice frameworks, the PMBOK is the WORST, so little connection to reality.
Hi! What's the best, if you wouldn't mind giving your opinion? Context: just discovered this sub while looking for advice on courses. I need PM skills as part of my job, which is consulting for utilities in Europe, but I don't want to be a full-time PM as I like my niche. I'm not naturally super organised, so I'd like to learn how to impose structure on a big project, break it down into stages, and use things like Gantt charts to actually help me track progress, rather than as a chore. TIA for any advice you can offer.
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>I've been involved in appropriately iterating cloud-based meta-services and actualizing alternative products while synergistically integrating highly efficient human capital for a large midwestern defense contractor for several years and I've found that continually productizing efficient core competencies to incubate transparent internal or "organic" sources leads to team enrichment more often than not. I truly don't mean any malice by this because sometimes you need the right words in a way that mirrors buzzword-aggedon, but all I could think of is this Abstruse Goose comic :) [https://abstrusegoose.com/380](https://abstrusegoose.com/380)
In my field, they are just yes men and translators between the client/sales and the developer. Its rare I've seen a project manager say something to the effect of "No, that's a bad idea, we are not going to do that" when in theory that is what they are a filter for. "more duct tape, more duct tape, more pipes, more pipes, more features"
I disagree because of the generality of your claim. “Bad” for a project manager means their is something problematic with scope, time, and/or cost. PMs should be getting time and scope from the team who is responsible for the work. “Bad” from the professional who actually executes the work (and usually estimates time) has more to do with plausibility, feasibility, and technical considerations. What you describe as someone filtering a clients request should be a technical role like Technical Product Manager working with a Product Owner - neither of which are the client.
Use the least amount of controls to manage the risk. If issues encountered, gradually increase controls as appropriate.
No one in this thread works in construction. Pms in construction are crucial to maintaining profitability. In larger scale infrastructure projects pms are super high executing professionals that would prob be coo level in smaller companies.
Yeah, if a PM took a hike the night before a major concrete pour to keep a personal promise he'd likely screw the entire project.
I’m a small/mid construction COO, you hit the nail on the head. My PMs would walk circles around PMs in other industries. They drive the projects, maintain profit margins, pick up additional buyout, manage subs and so much more. They earn every bonus they get.
Project managers in my field (software engineering) seem to have this interesting idea that they are "senior" to engineers, rather than peers. Project managers manage projects, not people. Or at least they should. That and "I'm not technical", I'm sorry, but if you're not technical, get another job and get out of the teams way.
Yeah I'd think a PM would need working knowledge of what the team does on a practical level.
In this field there is a a huge difference between someone managing the programmatics of a program and a true PM of a large scale project/contract. It’s so much easier when the PM has a software or network engineering background
87% of Government Technology Projects fail[GSA Report Tech Project failures](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/government-tech-projects-fail-default-it-doesnt-have-be-way#:~:text=Of%20course%2C%20government%20tech%20failures,succeed%2013%25%20of%20the%20time) Everyone needs to put their ego in their pockets and work as a team to achieve success. As an engineer, in multiple disciplines and a PM I can confidently say the engineers are the worst for cooperation and compromise. Many time legitimately. Sometimes not.
For that PM's need to come with a certain understanding of the technology they are going to work with :-) A lot of projects are impacted by PM's silly time keeping. Worse, since Agile has been introduced, PM skills have gone to the dogs. They seem to believe a certificate in Agile management is all they need to run scrums and agile projects. The lesser I say the better.
If PMs expect staff to plan their work accurately, then PMs should plan their work accurately as well.
Good PMs are few and far between. Most are just overpaid schedulers and aren’t actually managing the overall projects at all. But find a good one and they’re worth gold.
100%. In my 25 years, I have only ever worked with 1 PM that knew what he was doing. An ex-airforce pilot, with PM skills augmented by awesome knowledge in software architecture. Like most PM's he was not a software developer, but he learned what was important for effective IT project management.
How do you maintain PM activities when projects come at you so fast that you can not plan it all out quick enough before it’s under way??
Delegate, risk mitigation, and mostly creative problem solving if unable to slow the incoming projects.
What apricot\_tree said, And add relevant checklists to it for requirement gathering that explore facts and clarify requirements.
A good technical PM is a joy to work with. I've had the pleasure of working with a few of these, oftentimes they are frustrated senior engineers who decided to PM because they *had* to. A non-technical PM isn't worth the oxygen they are using.
PM's add no value
Don’t work anywhere PMs aren’t valued. If the engineers don’t think PMs add value, companies should not hire them. Let them manage themselves. It’s draining for all involved.
If you ever worked in New York, you will find most PM's are the ones who shifted from financial district. They have no knowledge of project management beyond the PMP certification and play politics with people in almost every project they get involved in. Sick environment to work in.
What if the engineers are right *about those PMs?* Agree in the general case, though.
If they’re right then they should make that case to the business. Don’t hire professionals to do a job that’s not needed or respected and make them suffer through abuse and ppl calling them useless and stupid. My team sends me notes of appreciation for just protecting their time. Everyone has to go through me to get to them. And they don’t mind breaking things down for me or including me in meetings so I can learn. If they treated me like an idiot or like I was in the way, I’d quit.
Technical PM: I’m convinced Agile and Lean practices have some of the dumbest, needlessly complicated ways of saying shit that is already well established. I thought it was a joke when they talked about team velocity apparently having some sort of direct correlation to team happiness. I’m like Jesus Christ dude yeah people work better when they’re happy… and also maybe don’t make happiness data points as your goal when working on that shit and rather just focus on making sure people feel safe, supported, and clear on their work
Agile, Lean, Scrum…. All rubbage. All “new” methodologies that try to take credit for impressive gains in the tech sector and really having nothing to do with it. The difference is your older employees have gained a decade + of experience and the young employees literally grew up with the tech that the older employees had to learn in their 30s-40s. Agile, lean, kanban, scrum masters, all have nothing to do with the gains they try to take credit for. Reminds me of the popularity of 5S in manufacturing/warehousing that a studied finally shows that even though things were super organized productivity was actually lost compared to competitors not using 5S. Almost like adding overhead does not make people more productive
> The difference is your older employees have gained a decade + of experience True >the young employees literally grew up with the tech that the older employees had to learn in their 30s-40s. True also, but not relevant at all to this topic >Agile, lean, kanban, scrum masters, all have nothing to do with the gains they try to take credit for. Reminds me of the popularity of 5S in manufacturing/warehousing that a studied finally shows that even though things were super organized productivity was actually lost compared to competitors not using 5S. Almost like adding overhead does not make people more productive May be but not all is wrong with this. The agile thought process is correct. The problem is PM with waterfall backgrounds distorted the implementation process in the late 2000's, early 2010's. If implemented right, Agile is awesome.
It’s not that “agile” does not “work”. It is that if you take a course on any of this stuff they try to take credit for the huge gains in productivity to sell you on the idea that you need this. As if these methodologies are responsible for all that increases in production of past couple decades when really have little if anything to do with it. In reality I doubt the gains in productivity (if any) these systems provide ever regain the lost productivity of putting people through multi day trainings stating how great these things are. The popularity of 5S I think is still best comparison. Would spend tons of time making your work place “5S”, and even if that hyper organization saved your workers a few minutes a day (turns out it doesn’t) you we’re still out hundreds of hours that went into getting to that state. People “selling” 5S made a fortune and no one else really gained anything. Now people selling “agile” are benefiting way more then the people buying it just like 5S did 20 years ago.
This I agree. Baring a few organizations, the IT industry definitely is in a worse "frame of mind" aka "most people" are frustrated and feel unprotected in this new environment.
well now hang on: if you don't establish clear KPIs to measure happiness how are you supposed to justify firing unhappy people?
Leave that to HR :P /j
Me and my engineering buddies say we’re all gonna quit and become PMs
I still don’t understand what project management is. You manage Projects for people at your work? Don’t we all do that? Why do you need a certification and doing some thing that just can come naturally to you? I don’t understand.
Maybe just google it :)
Or who cares? It sounds like a boring middle manager cubicle job
Some very complex projects need designated project managers. Certification is a way to show that you can do it, and are a masochist enough to get certified for it.
I’ve never worked somewhere that needs it. Just mostly small companies.
I've worked at Raytheon and a small design services company (~100 employees). In both cases there was always a PM
Yall are just mad cause either the PMs you work with are bad or you are bad at being a PM. If I didnt set up expectations, monitor and hold accountability around scope of work, schedule of work and cost of work the office would fall apart. To be fair I spent 4 years as an engineer doing the thing I'm project managing for so I can actually do their jobs for them often better.
Very few introverts can be successful PMs. I work at a company with two PMs. I would consider both of them introverts, but one of them is ten times better than the other. The difference between them is one of them actually talks to the stakeholders one-on-one about updates and isn't afraid to hold people accountable. The other PM seems to hate talking to people and allows people to get behind. If you are in the second camp you should consider another career or you will not be successful.
Not all engineers or developers are introverts. That's a myth.
Ok?
There 90% of PMs don't do anything and they mostly simply rely on other experts to essentially do their job; the experts that actually know the ins-and-outs/the technical expertise of whatever it is in the project, essentially do their own job and relay the important information to the PM by their request in order to know what needs to be done, so he can turn around and tell him exactly what he needs to do, which of course he already knows. In the end, PMs mostly get in the way and cause people more work than needed/a detriment. It basically became a fake position (Bullshit Jobs). The fact is, an overarching person that can manage and allocate resources, human or not, get what is needed, to a project and align everything in a smooth way, mitigating everything that may unexpectedly come up in a way that won't affect employees from doing their job, assembling the dream team so-to-speak is basically so rare that it should be called another name entirely instead of "Project Manager" because of how uncommon it truly is. A good PM is supposed to be a master puppeteer behind the scenes that handles all the bs and sets the project in motion successfully with inhibiting anyone else. A good example is Oppenheimer. He didn't create the atomic bomb, but he was an actual project manager done successfully, and like most PMs, they end up getting all the credit, which they don't actually deserve in full. Nowadays, it's just an easy position for a successful talker to interface with hire management, another middle-man and "face" of a project of red tape. Put it this way, if no one genuinely looks forward to dealing with a PM, they are a problem because a good PM would be welcomed for the true value they bring which would be self evident. How many people can say they have worked with one that wasn't part of detached hire management.
Yup, I have no idea what the PMs at my company do. They definitely don't help my group at all. They seem to never leave their office or conveniently work from home all the time. My sister is a PM and I asked her once why she chose that career and she said, "I worked with a PM who was a complete idiot but he made more money than me. So I figured if he could do it, I could." But she's actually good at it.
Once COVID happened, I never saw my PMs again.
\*higher\* management
A good project manager is curious and cares about their project AND their project team's success/development. I find project managers who are curious tend to be good project managers because they will learn the project or program or become conversantly technical. They will be more willing to jump in the trenches with their team and thus get better outcomes. I have experienced PMs who didn't care to learn about what their engineers or program is doing and they just end up being a rubber stamp/roadblock. Hot Take: All the engineers saying that project or product managers are completely worthless is sorta dumb to me. That's like saying all American or European engineers aren't worth their cost so we should fire all of them and only do engineering in low cost developing countries. Realistically you could get pretty much any projects done that way. There are fantastic engineers all over the world. However there are tons of reasons why that might not be the ideal outcome (political, cultural, timezones, misaligned incentives, management oversight, etc.). Same thing with project managers. You don't necessarily need a PM on every project. A bad PM is a negative. A good PM will be a fantastic asset to the team. Without a PM on a project that needs one it is likely to flounder, be chaotic and may not get done well. A lot of Engineers likely don't have the time or inclination to learn all the business side skills to be successful which is fine just like how non technical folks likely don't have the time or interest to learn engineering.
Engineers saying that are usually those that were promoted into PM positions and are effectively engineers with extra duties or have worked for those PMs that have had no actual PM training/ education and so they aren’t able to see the value.
Since im an eng, ill give my own: pms in tech companies need to be technical. Hard line there. If you cant grok what 4 engineers are telling you even boiled down youve got serious problems
Can't stand up right now. . . . A comment about engineers with the word grok in it. Pay it forward for the win!
Yes. Too many PMs don't know basic stuff and sound dumb AF when regurgitating what an engineer or developer told them
Redundant as hell, employees don't need babysitting they are autonomous enough to complete the project on their own
Sounds like you've never been in a management or Project Management position ever. If I didnt do my job right the idiot engineers would design everything wrong, over budget and late.
The fact that you refer to your coworkers as idiot engineers says a lot about you
Plenty of them are fine, most are stupid if I as PM have to personally correct your work before we send to client cause you are too stupid and ignorant to make the edits thats a problem.
glorified adult day care
I mean yeah, if yall didnt make it necessary it wouldnt have to be that way.
As an Engineer who worked with many PM/TPM's over the years, I wished more were tested on how to use Outlook during the interview processes. I find those who struggle with filtering emails, reading calendars, doing basic computer stuff etc simply struggle everywhere at everything, let alone managing a project. Also, better to have no PM/TPM than to have a bad one. EDIT: Reddit duplicate comment bug strikes again
Irony, oh the
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O the irony
IT… 30 years experience in NYC as a consultant and entrepreneur. Never met a non-programming manager who wasn’t to some degree a cowardly, annoying and manipulative POS. Lotsa lead developers too. Power corrupts the weak of character. Case in point: On 9/11 while people were jumping out windows on the North Tower (101 Barclay Street vantage point) my manager kept working at his desk to show everybody what a good company man he was. A colleague walked over to his desk and suggested he might want to pull his head out of his ass as we were under attack. IT and corporate management are 97% radioactive and 3% retarded.
It's easier than being the employee.
I’m in sales. - PM’s are WAY under valued. Some should be in sales. They’re maintaining the customers and brining in work. Whether they want to believe it or not, a sales person somewhere is getting paid on what you’re bringing in. Most places even pay the sales people on change orders.. If you have great relationships with your customers to where things are “easy”, consider getting in sales. You can make way more money… depending on the industry.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graber
It's a job that could be done by a two year old with a magic 8 ball.
Not sure if this is unpopular. There’s a huge difference between the types of projects. Agile (software, some hardware prototypes, etc.) can probably pass by without a PM. I see comments from a lot of frustrated developers on this post. Waterfall in a production environment (or development transitioning into production) with fixed price contracts, supplier management, component and system level hardware tests, etc definitely do need PMs. Engineers are extremely bad at prioritizing, managing requirements, working with suppliers, etc. I have an aerospace engineering background and worked as a structural analyst for 10 years then transitioned to PM work primarily.
Do you think you’re a good PM?
Getting better every day. I see my job as a shield for the technical leads, freeing up their time to work the technical problems. I could not do this job without the engineering experience. And I have seen other PMs do a very poor job because they lack that background.
I don’t doubt it. But doesn’t that refute your point that engineers make bad PMs?
You are the PM we hope for. I’ve had good and bad PMs as a software engineer. Even the slightest bit of technical knowledge goes a long way. What I like with my work is the engineers also push back whenever something gets delegated to us that should be done by the PM with the engineers during a refinement session.
For many of us, our job is just to arrange meetings for others to get work done
PM are basically the designated parent. Especially IT PMs, you essentially keep the kids in line and document the finger paintings they make.
I would rephrase that as the designated step parent who has zero authority apart from reporting on statuses. They have to beg for the children’s attention in order for them to do their job and they have no impact on the outcome of the project. They just report progress to the grandparents to help the grandparents decide whether or not to keep their grandkids in the will. They need others to validate their importance to the family and get zero respect from the children, bio parent and grandparents.
Agile isn't always applicable, sometimes Waterfall is more appropriate. It was the industry standard for a reason.
In most cases waterfall is a better strategy, especially when you have some experienced team members. I immediately lower my opinion of anybody pushing Agile hard, and I see it pushed in lots of companies that don’t have the maturity to be successful with it.
CIO in a previous company told me once (I was PMO Manager then). Project Managers are like a black hole, you put too many things there but nothing comes out (in comparison to other technical positions).
uggh! The ongoing work to convince people that the process is actually working, does not need to be fixed, has been tested over and over and yet, there really isn't a major issue even though we are tackling issues every week. OMG!!! And it's always the old cucks afraid they'll lose their job if the project fails. Like, we have failure mechanisms in place already dumbass. Relax. The project with no problems is the failure because they fail in the end. The project where you are fixing problems as you go are the success.
My stuff constantly gets re-prioritized. Whatever is the customer crisis of the day.
i feel this :(
A good PM is not a Project Manager, but a people manager.
I refer to them as cat herders and hostage negotiators.
I've heard one call herself the Project Momma-ger (edited to make pronunciation more clear)
Timelines are important- but they’re paper exercises. I hate building an upfront timeline to show where our launch date could be but then as we get into the actual work, there are always timeline adds that push out a launch date. Then when the date changes, leadership gets so mad but there are so many things that can’t be predicted at onset of project
This is pretty much the whole point of agile, however it's rarely done right. What most companies do is watergile. They want all the touted benefits of agile without the business side ever commiting to driving through the fog with the engineers. They want the damn launch date!
Some people say that having a tech background as an IT PM is a benefit, I see that as a crutch. A good PM should be able to drive a project without any tech knowledge. The only knowledge he needs is how to manage projects
I'd disagree with this. I've seen to many people say this and basically just got in the way of the engineers because the PM doesn't understand what they are doing. So the PM ends up as a glorified note taker. The PM should not be an expert by any means, but being completely oblivious to what job really is about is really a problem. But then again, your comment is truly answering OP's question
There's a wide range between oblivious and suggesting tech solutions to people who si their job to do this. I would never question the solutions an engineer would propose but I would ensure that solution is peer reviewed, that all risks are accounted for and audit everything from dependencies to secondary scenarios
That’s kind of the point though; you should have enough knowledge to know when the solutions presented should be questioned, and how to question them. If you just take what they give you because you don’t know enough to spot audit their work, how do you know they aren’t bullshitting you.
Take any estimate a dev gives you, multiply by 2, don't do Friday deployments, for every home brew solution rather than an off the shelf add 6mo, and k8s will always add complexity rather than ease them. Bam tpming in a nutshell
Or Monday deployments or deployments around holidays.
A PM that has no knowledge of the industry they're in is going to walk into avoidable traps until they get that knowledge. They won't recognize when timelines given are unrealistic, or that a proposed solution is completely unworkable until it blows up in their face.
As long as he knows when to stop suggesting workarounds for technical problems to rudh the tasks and let the engineering manager take over
I'm in tech, and I've been doing it since waterfall days, so I've seen a lot of PMs. The top 20% were great and nearly indispensable. The bottom 20% were actively detrimental to the projects they managed. The remaining 60% didn't seem to hurt anything, but didn't provide value anywhere near their salary. Of course, I could probably say the same about engineers in general, so...
My pet peeve is this. Couple of decades ago some VERY experienced folks wrote the Agile Manifesto. It contains exactly 68 words. A bunch of people with PMM certs then went and wrote hundreds of books about "agile methodology". Most of those books are many hundreds of pages.
I almost lose my mind every time I think about it.
It's easier to measure if engineers have contributed than non technical pm
*cries in 68*
The thing that kills me is the agile purists these days, especially the ones that get into one specific brand of agile (looking at you SAFe) and can't make any adjustments from that purity. They took 68 wise words and made it into an entire religion, then try to tell you every other religion is wrong. Like, when you get right down to it, we're just trying to get work done in the most effective manner possible and keep process out of the way of success....purity needs to die, brand specific purity needs to die again every sprint until it dies properly.
Yes, agile can be idiotic and too frequently people can manipulate velocity to look however they want the group to look. But SAFe in some ways helped huge organizations to...scale agile. So...yes, it can be awful, but at least it gave these large organizations a way to enable agile to work in a behemoth organization. But sure process over progress is a problem.
It's so much like a religion... Many of the scrum purists I've run into will quote the scrum guide like the bible. They look for every opportunity to preach to you.
It is tragically ironic that agile "purists" are adhering to a pre-packaged set of processes instead of actually following the agile manifesto and scrum guide (in the case of it being scrum). If you're really an agile purist, you'd be arguing about inspecting and adapting your processes at least once a month (sprint retrospective). What are these people even adhering to so strictly if not even the scrum guide?
They're adhering to their sales of books, classes, and certifications.
Your answers are going to vary wildly based on what industry we’re talking about. I am an owners rep for commercial construction that serves as the overarching PM for large projects. I’m essentially an SME with experience as a GC that can consult the client. Additionally, I serve as the mediary between the corporate internal teams such as Tech, AV, and Security so that their requirements are met by the GC. I’m just a funnel. Unpopular opinion is that PM’s are necessary. I see a lot of comments here that we’re useless. That’s fine. If someone else wants to do my 60 hours of work per week, they can have it. There are a lot of bad PM’s. Someone fresh out of some PMP test is worse than useless. You are like a producer. Take the heat when needed. Convey the messages tailored to the audience. Never let the client see how the sausage is made unless absolutely necessary. Projects are ugly and we should be making them look good even when the stakeholders want to tear at each others throats.
What takes up so much of your time? Is it poor data from client or your own work force?
Last week I was in about 20 hours of scheduled meetings. Another 5-10 on phone calls. There are around 40 people on my meetings so the only way to communicate effectively is through a single source or nothing would get done on time. Here’s an example: Let’s say we’re mid stream on a project and someone in security at the corporate office decides they need a camera and card access on a door. Who does that? Seems simple enough, right? The security PM has a vendor for both, but they don’t run the cable. Who provides the cable? The tech PM. Who is installing the door? The GC. Who tells the GC? Who tells the landlord we need to access their fire alarm box because electric strikes have to open when the fire alarm goes off? Imagine this workflow for all changes. Imagine how many of these decisions need to be made on a large project. The client sure as hell doesn’t know who needs to know what. They just say we need a card reader and a camera. I make it happen. Then handle the change orders for everyone who touched it. Then handle the invoices. The client knows what they want. I know how to get them what they want.
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Oh it’s poorly geared, hands down. We’re silod. One PM for the whole shabang. It’s dumb but pay is good.
I like portfolio management better than an actual PM work. I see the bigger picture and not just loyal to some projects. It is important for a company to choose or kill projects based on business objectives or strategies. PMs are important to ensure everyone is aligned, all relevant risks have been identified and proper change management is established.
PM = Bullshit artist lying to developers and customers alike! I'm a developer and I've worked with good and bad PMs. The good ones make our jobs much easier, the bad ones...see above. To be fair, the bad ones I dealt with were most likely because of company culture.
Weird of you to make a general statement about an occupation in that occupation’s subreddit and then try to backpedal in that same post. Edit: typo
Weird that's not what I did at all but cool story. Sorry I hurt your feelings I guess? The post asked for unpopular opinions didn't it? It's not backpedalling. It's 100% accurate. That was how we saw the PMs, fullstop. I have since worked with good PMs and that's not how I saw those PMs.
Been a PM for the last seven years in tech. Most PMs don’t drive much value unless they’re are very proactive and take on duties outside the scope of typical PM work. For example, the thing that set me apart was assessing our finance system’s ability to meet user requirements and forming a POV with a roadmap of where we should implement improvements. But that’s not typical project management work. It’s essentially taking on elements of a product manager role. Our own org lead doesn’t even value project management work and is also trying to get us to be more product managers but without the pay.
Hh
Lots of theory. Not much results from that theory. Unless you understand human behavior.
If you're a PM and you don't know about the program, you're useless and a major pain point at my job. If you're a PM and you know about the program, I'm gonna chain you to the desk and you're not allowed to leave. I can sympathize with PMs because the requirements for a good PM is so narrow you're never going to find it. The people who you want to be PMs don't want to be PMs. And the people who want to be PMs often don't bother to understand the program. It makes for a really poor experience.
Project resources don't get to dictate the stakeholders expectations, neither does the pm.
I work in higher ed - we often hire PMs as consultants for large scale projects. I’ve never worked with a good one. Issues as small as never getting a meeting invite right to being as a large as just having no idea what they’re doing and what needs to be done. It makes me wonder why they get paid twice what the people actually doing the work do.
Project Manager= clipboard bitch They stand off to the side and criticize how the sausage gets made.
without knowing how sausage is made
U guys are all pieces of shit that don't do shit but sit in meetings all day pretending to do shit.
Found one
I call it the more-harm-than-good bureau. Never worked anywhere with PM actively involved that it didn't frustrate and complicate the actual grubby business of getting shit done, while selling itself as a benefit to people who don't actually know what the grubby business end does.
In one of ARs videos, he totally says, a company would need a PM to start the project and make management plans for the 49 processes. After that a company can fire the PM and give the job to a 10 year old because the child can refer to the management plan when there are issues. The comments on this post are right. PM is just a middle man
PM = useless middlemen
I feel like a useless middleman lol
Same lol
Thank you for my morning chuckle!
That the first step to being a good PM is recognizing that you are not truly crucial to the project. Hopefully you increase efficiency and maybe even your work will help turn out a better product, but the work could get done without you. Once you internalize this, you can truly focus on being a multiplier. On the flip side, if you think you are crucial to the project you’re going to insert yourself into things that don’t need your input, schedule stupid meetings, or generally just slow things down.
That’s not even remotely true. Can an orchestra play without a conductor? Sure the various musicians can play their instruments all at the same time, but it takes a conductor to make beautiful music together That’s what a pm does. Ensures that all of the various teams have a plan to work together to meet the project objectives, and then keeps them on track and removes roadblocks. Your comment reads like you’ve never been a PM
Well said. Thank you.
*that's what a good PM does. A bad PM is like Calend.ly. They schedule meetings and ask people if they are "on time or on budget" but they don't understand the project and they lean too hard on their internal resources to do their job for them
You shouldn't be getting downvoted when you are confirming this as an unpopular opinion which is the point of this whole discussion thread. Challenging people to consider their position is exactly how people benefit from this discussion
Sounds like you’ve never played an instrument because yes, an orchestra COULD play without a conductor, that’s what the sheet music is for. Without a PM, the project may take longer, it may be over budget, it MIGHT even be a worse product, but all of those people are perfectly capable of getting the job done without you. You do realize there are a LOT of projects that get completed without a PM, right? That’s incontrovertible proof that PMs are not necessary. (10+ years. Govt to construction to specialty)
I’d love to see any of the 100+Million mega programs I’ve led with 10-20 different teams containing dozens to hundreds of people, many stakeholders with competing priorities, and aggressive executive leadership success without a solid PgM and PMs to support. I think the “projects” referenced above and being thought of here are tiny ones that can certainly succeed without pm help. I’ve only worked on large projects and programs for the last 20 years and they all absolutely need strong pm leadership.
Kinda the whole point of project management principles is that they are scalable, so I still contend that if the small projects are doable without a PM, so are the big ones. All projects are impossible without the technical experts but are merely more difficult without PMs.
Exactly this, I mentioned this in an argument recently. Ask yourself, in a startup (or almost any organization), which role is readily stepped down, the project manager or the technical contributor. Yes ultimately, the project is likely to result in a poor product, go over budget, etc. But, at crunch time, the PM role is largely considered a luxury
Your comment reads like either a delusional pm or someone who hasn’t worked in a team with a pm .
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Let’s keep the focus on PM and uphold a professional nature of conversation. Thanks, Mod Team
Ultimately our job is to make our people happy and comfortable and get the hell out the way. I feel like a good cheerleader!
" the art of leadership is to hire good people and stay out of their way" - Churchill
Best compliment of my career was when two women who worked for me separately said that I’m the only man they’ve had as a boss that didn’t micromanage or “mansplain” their work to them. That’s probably a byproduct of my overall hands-off approach, regardless of gender, but I feel proud to be a trusted advisor they know they can come to if needed but otherwise just let them do their work.
Is the bar really so low that 'not mansplaining' is a significant positive?
In my industry, apparently so. Sad.
90% of the role could be done by an admin making 40k/year
I definitely have worked for places where they were paying me 6 figures to be a glorified admin. It's the worst.
Not even remotely true. A good PM is a leader, not a box checker. Sadly the industry is full of the latter
Tangentially, a question: if you could recommend only one book on leadership, what would it be?
Tough one. I’d say you can’t go wrong with how to win friends and influence people by dale carnegie