How to move from IT programming to IT project management

"As a coder you know what it means to be part of a project team"

Not all the software developers work on project teams. Some years ago I worked as a contractor developer on a product development team and the work was not organized as projects and as such project management was not used at all. Also there was no Project Manager working on those activities.

Project Management and Software Development are completely different things and Project Managers are not required to manage software development. Project Managers are only required if the software development activity is performed as part of a project that has to deliver something in a set budget.

Software maintenance and software product development can be performed as ongoing Business as Usual activities without having to deliver something using a set budget. Project Management is not required for these activities.

A software developer and coder are require two different skillsets and are two different roles. A software developer producers all the documentation surrounding the production of lines of code and associated program. A coder on the other hand produces and debugs code for a specific program. A coder is just one skillset that you will find on a project team that is building, testing or replicating a information technology system. I would not think it presumptuous to say at this stage of her career she would not know what its like to have worked on a project team.

"A software developer and coder are require two different skillsets and are two different roles."

I have started my career as a software developer but I have never heard of something like that.

Writing software code or coding is the basic skill of any software developer. So all the software developers are coders. Writing code however is not the only responsibility of a software developer. As the developer becomes more experienced he gets involved in other technical activities related with software development.

Lead developers or software developing managers may end up writing fewer code and in the case of managers they may end up not writing code at all.

I have never heard of people that are just coders and not software developers. Even entry level software developers are required to write documentation if needed.

"I would not think it presumptuous to say at this stage of her career she would not know what its like to have worked on a project team."

As I said in my previous message not all the software development activities are carried out as projects. Some developers don't work at all on project teams but on product development or software maintenance teams. Depends on how these activities are organized there may be no project managers involved in this type of work.

Before their was software engineers their was coders. That is people who wrote code for an operating systems. The term software engineer has only been in existence since the formalisation of computer coding as a profession and this occurred when multiple coders were grouped together for a specific task and so this required the formalisation and documentation of their tasks thus a project. As I have said in previous posts the profession of project manager is a life long learning job so I am sure there a things that you may not be aware of that you will learn and pick up as time passes.

Adrian,

Although off the subject of Alison’s post, there is a difference between a Coder (i.e. Programmer-only), Software Developer, Software Engineer and a myriad of other roles. A programmer-only role is something you don’t see too much of anymore (thankfully), and is what I refer to as a “coder in the box”.

The main distinction between the Programmer-only role and the Software Developer is their concern scope. A Software Developer is looking at the complete system (i.e., the big picture) and is concerned to the end-state deliverable (and its requirements). Whereas, a Programmer-only is coding to meet the requirements of a specific work-area that has been given to him/her, there scope of concern is only that work-area and then their next work-area, etc.

Unfortunately, I still see “coder-in-the-box” roles, but these are normally in large organizations. Back in the day (70’s and 80’s), you would have hundreds of programmers in large rooms, who were happy if they got a few lines of code written and submitted to be compiled on the mainframe. Those days are past, but there is still a mindset that drives the need for programmer-only roles, especially when there is a highly structured custom framework in place.

Thanks this make it clear. But I guess as @George says Programmer-only roles are not that common anymore. I have never seen such a role.

If you don't enjoy programming or programming for long hours then definitely you must change your career.

I am not sure what is the situation in the USA but I think in average project managers earn a little bit more than software developers. Since you only have 4 years of experience as a developer maybe you could find an entry level project management position with similar pay.

A senior software development role however almost always pays much more than an entry level project management role so if you become very senior in your current role then yes you will have to accept a much smaller salary to move your career. So I would hurry up if I were you. :)

Also you should consider other careers also, maybe Business Analyst, Scrum Master?

You may be surprised but many PMs in software development or IT in general don't get to take a lot of decisions on their own, mostly they facilitate the decisions process managing the communication between all the stakeholders. You should not confuse a technical (functional) manager role with project management.

Good luck!

Hi Alison,
I found your question while looking for some other answers. It piqued my interest, because I was a software developer for some years before gradually changed into a project manager, an IT project manager to be exact. I have no interest in managing projects that aren't software development ones. In that context, the software development experience is crucial to my day to day to PM work. In fact, I have witnessed other project managers without software development background struggled to grasp the discussions, implications of various decisions made.

In my experience, the most valuable thing in making myself marketable as IT project manager is demonstrated project success. I'd gradually inserted myself in tasks relating to facilitating roles, managing of my team's relationships, analyzing of requirements. Eventually, I earned the trust of my manager to lead and plan projects, from small to bigger. After leading few of those to success, I had enough to get the PMP (another marketable thing). My manager can see the clear benefits of having a PM for his software projects. So much that i'd like to clone myself at this point.

In summary, I think software development exp gives you a notable edge in IT project managing. Start your career switch gradually, build up your demonstrated experience wherever you can, opportunistically.

Thanks George. I did not know that.

Now it is very rare to hear of programmer jobs or positions. The term programmer has become now to a large extent synonym with software developer or software engineer even if the words are not exactly synonyms.

Programming or coding is the basic skill of any software developer/engineer but indeed software developers also have other responsibilities especially those in senior role.