Technical Project manager v/s Project Manager

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Nahid Ahmed Mansuri Engineering Manager| Globallogic India

How is a Technical Project manager different from a Project Manager?
What skills are required to become a technical PM in IT/software?

Posted: Jul 5, 2018 7:52 AM

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Adrian Carlogea Australia

Jul 13, 2018 8:59 AM

Replying to Dinah Young

...

Adrian,

You have mentioned several times that Project Managers do not have domain knowledge and are powerless. In my 30+ years of experience I have never seen this. All of my project managers have had domain knowledge (maybe not to the level of the team members but enough to understand what they are talking about) and have had quite a bit of authority over their team. If you do not understand the technical then how can you create a reasonable schedule and how will you know when to escalate an issue and how will you know what resources to acquire.

Therefore, the difference between a technical project manager and a project manager is just the level of technical knowledge, at least in my area. If a job classification says technical project manager, they are looking for someone who can jump in and handle technical issues themselves if needed or who have enough knowledge to train/coach the team members.

Almost all the PMs that I have worked with were unable to perform the work of any of the other team members because of lack of skills and experience. They were not supposed to perform the actual work but not being able to do it means that they lack enough domain knowledge to lead the team.

How can a PM manage a project when he lacks technical knowledge?

1) Planning/Schedule: The actual information needed in the plan is being provided by the technical experts, the PM only has to gather the information an put into a software so that he can track the work being performed. This can be achieved even if the PM does not understand the work that needs to be done. Of course there are dependencies but the PM can work with the technical experts and with other stakeholders to work them out. Project planning involves many variables many of them not being dependent on technical knowledge. Technical knowledge is a must in planning but the planner does not necessarily have to be a technical experts as he can ask for the information that he needs.

2) Escalation. The PM simply asks the team members how they are doing and if they have impediments. If they do then he would try to fix them if not he would escalate them. Nonetheless not having technical knowledge escalating could be more difficult.

3) Resource allocation: If the company that delivers the project has all the required resources then the PM has nothing to worry about as functional managers would assign all the required resources. The PM does not have to explain the technical details to functional managers as they are able to get this information by themselves.

However if the company has no technical expert in the required domain then finding the right resources would be a difficult task. But this is not necessarily only the PM's problem but a problem of the organization as it needs resources that it does not have. In this case the PM does not have the required domain knowledge but no one else from the organization does.

Posted: Jul 16, 2018 8:19 AM

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Technical Project manager v/s Project Manager

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