Jayarajah JeyakanthanProject Manager/ Coordinator| UNOPS-LKOCMildura, Victoria, Australia
Do you think that ,technical skills are essential for a Project Manager to be successful in leading a project? or Just having the PM knowledge and skills are sufficient to manage a project? Saving Changes...
* to understand risks associated with the project and act on it
* to analysis various project management methodologies which suite for the project characteristics and decide appropiate project management methodology
* to decide appropriate delivery methodology
* to negotiate with team members about their work items while planning for project scheduling and fix the dependencies issues more appropriately
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Bipin Lekshmanan PMPProject Manager| Wipro TechnologiesEdison, Nj, United States
In my view, it depends..however, there is no denying the fact that understanding what you are dealing with gives more control to you and makes you take more accurate decisions...otherwise, you'll have to depend on someone who complements the skills sets that you possess... Saving Changes...
Josh NankivelEngineering Project Manager| AppleSioux Falls, Sd, United States
A background in the technical work can be helpful. The value comes from understanding general concepts involved, the general capabilities of the technology, etc.
For instance, on a software development project you need to be able to talk to the developers and understand their work at a high level. That doesn't mean you have to be able to program alongside them, just know enough to ask the right questions, have a general feel for what they do, and be able to call their bluff if necessary. In my experience programmers sometimes push back on a requirement by saying it's not possible, or design a solution that is easy and/or elegant to program but not value-added to the user. Having a general database and software development background has helped me push back when necessary, and provides valuable input into all other aspects of managing a software development project.
If you start managing a project and don't have experience with the work, go get yourself some. Lean on the staff who are doing the work, and make a concerted effort to learn the principles, concepts, and capabilities involved. If you sit back and do the PM thing without caring about the actual work that is going on, I think you are likely to fail.
A project will have a better chance of success if the PM can play an active role in the execution of critical aspects of the project. This will help motivate the team members to achieve greater quality, and will also provide an additional validation layer. To this extent, a PM's technical/domain expertise will be helpful.
For example, although a PM should rely on appropriate resources for schedule planning, technical architecture/design, etc, having the technical/domain background will help the PM take active participation in all of these aspects, which would help in the overall success of the project.
However, the PM’s responsibility is to manage the project and not to provide technical/domain expertise. So, the PM must ensure that resources with the required skills are assigned to the project. Moreover, the PM’s technical expertise should be limited to validation, providing suggestions, and helping guide the teams, and he/she should not force technical decisions onto the team.
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My background is in web development and I find the skills I learned as a 'developer' (I wouldn't call web site development using scripting a real developer...) invaluable.
I find I relate to our software development team much easier and have a better time directing them with how to get certain jobs done.
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Narayana MurtyProgram Manager| Dell InternationalHyderabad, Andhrapradesh, India
Few questions asking here: Hope you can get answers for your queries, when answering these.
A) Do you have strong business analysts and technical leads/architects in your team? If so, you really need to not have extensive technical knowledge. However having it moderately is a nice to have feature for PMs which helps in in managing the projects @ good success rate.
Else
B) When project team providing esitmations based on the information they have, are you confident that those estimations are making sense?
C) When project team explaining about the technical issue they are facing (irrespective of the technology), are you in a position to understand that and take the same to next level management and business when needed?
D) Do you have enough analytical skills to question/understand the business/technical problem?
In reply to the "how to develop technical skills" question:
I graduated from college with a US History major, but have worked for years as an IT project manager. I got "tech savvy" by doing the following:
1. I used to be a computer hacker, and programmed small, simple things when I was young
2. I read popular magazines about computers (PC Magazine) and subscribed to a variety of technical-management magazines. I kept reading them cover-to-cover until the terms became familiar. Now I just skim them.
3. I became a member of technical societies (IEEE, IEEE Computer, and ACM). I joined their technical management groups, and a few other special interest groups that related to the work I was doing. Again, I read the magazines and journals until I could recognize the important terms.
4. I asked lots of questions. When I did not know, I asked.
5. I read some classic books on the subject of programming, estimating, and computer programming. Steve McConnell is top of the list, and Karl Wiegers, Barry Bohem, DeCarlo, and many others follow closely afterwards. When I was stuck, I looked up the best book on a given topic, and read it. Sometimes I would get three or four books, read one cover to cover, then skim the rest to see what was different in those books.
If this seems like a lot of work, then you are understanding the process well. Doing this has gotten me through a few technology changes, though:
1. Mainframe
2. Real-time processing and communication
3. Telecom/datacom
4. Object-oriented programming
5. Web-based scripting
6. Inter-object and inter-computer processing (multi-tier architectures)
7. Object-oriented and relational database design
Each of these steps took new research and new study to gain understanding and credibility with the team.
Getting a technology mentor is really useful, too. They can answer your questions and help show you what you do not know yet. Some people really lean on their technology partner, and do not bother to learn much about the technology. Personally, I recommend learning as much as you can. If you completely rely on a technology partner, you have low credibility with the team and you can wind up lost if your technology partner leaves the company or is transferred. Saving Changes...
