Would you hire an experienced project manager for a regular operations role in an organization?

A few years ago, I was supporting a software application as part of BAU. I was responsible for ensuring the application is running, helping the users with their questions about how the application worked, fixing defects and developing new features (all the source code was available).

The target was to keep the users happy while they were using the application. We had a system where they could raise defects and requests for new features. Defects had higher priorities and were subject to SLAs while the requests for new features had lower priority. I discussed directly with the users on which requests they want done faster and I was doing them.

There was no leader involved in this activity and I don't think a PM would have improved anything. On the contrary he would have probably been an unwanted overhead.

When the application was developed it was done by a project that of course had a project manager.

In my opinion developing or implementing a new software solution is better done by a project while maintain it and also developing some enhancement to it is better done by operations activities.

Not all the operations activities can be done as projects.

If you are maintaining a software solution and end up with a lot of requests for new features from the part of the users you could move those requests from operations to a project.

If you have a helpdesk team that responds to user calls I don't see how you could run this activity as a project.

Ok, and how does that differ with what I have said?

Well, you said that it could be done but you also asked why it should be done. In reality however it can't always be done. So it is not just a matter of whether or not it would be a good idea to perform an activity as a project but is more of a matter if this is possible or not.

I don't think it is possible to operate a railway using projects and project management. You use projects to build the network, upgrade it, modernize it, etc but you can't operate the trains and the network with projects.

For some activities you can choose to do them either in projects or as part of operations but for others you have no choice.

The question was "Would you hire an experienced project manager for a regular operations role in an organization?" My reply was "It can be done, but why do it?" Then you went into why PM's in operational roles don't really make sense, and for the most part I agree with you. However, the question didn't ask "should you hire an experienced project manager for a regular operations role in an organization?", from which my reply would justify your follow up response. Further, there was no mention of the number of roles. In 1 million operational roles, I can see some being filled by project managers, and if I was filling those 1 million roles, I "would" undoubtedly fill some roles with PM's because it would probably be statistically impossible not to. "Should" I do it, that is up for debate, if the question had been asked so.