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Defining Roles for IT Governance (Part 1)
George Jucan is an experienced Project Manager Professional (PMP) with 20 years of technical and management experience in complex environments, both in public and private sector. He is well known in the project management community as a successful IT project management consultant, speaker at public events, trainer and author of project management articles.
The specialization trend visible in the general workforce is definitely making its presence in the project management area as well. There are now operational project managers that manage actual projects and PMO level project managers that guide other PMs. We also have project directors, leaders, coordinators, supervisors, controllers, assistants, liaisons and so many others, sometimes having specific duties but so many times performing at least parts of the project manager traditional activities.
The current turmoil brought up some confusion as well. Simply scanning the job postings, we can see a variety of titles and descriptions, and many times the same title will have totally different responsibilities, or similar descriptions will carry different titles. Each company uses its own titles and descriptions, and rightfully so as long as there is no clear standard to guide them.
In the programs and portfolios area, some light is starting to be seen with the definitions provided by PMI's Combined Standards Glossary (second edition), and it is expected that the upcoming standards for programs and for portfolio management will clarify things even further. However, even PMI does not venture in the project area, and the PMBOK Third Edition acknowledges various roles the project manager could have in functional, matrix or projectized organizations (see Chapter 2, section 2.3.…
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