What Shape of Project Manager Are You?

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Career Development  

People come into the project manager profession from several different paths. Some come to it from a management perspective—they were either educated in management or learned how to be a manager through experience, and transitioned those skills into managing people, projects or products.

Others come from being very good at whatever their particular job is—and they either decide they should manage others in the same role, or perhaps management is thrust upon them.

While some people surely become project managers intentionally, many more find themselves managing projects after they gain some experience—and many more simply fall into it and find they both enjoy it and are good at it.

As careers go, it’s a pretty good one; few things are as exciting as leading a team to deliver a project to the world, be it a new skyscraper, a new software package or even a trip to the moon.

Because project managers come from a multitude of backgrounds, they take on various forms or areas of expertise—or what I’ll call the “shape” of a project manager. It’s impossible for one person to be everything to everyone, and the project manager who attempts it is likely to suffer from burnout early in their career.

Most project managers have at least some level of competence in many things, and excel in a few. The best ones know where …

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