Deron LeStourgeonSenior Manager Installation Operations| Philips HealthcareSpring Branch, Tx, United States
I am in the process of transforming a Project Management work force focused on healthcare solutions into more IT focused organization. This is due to the fact the lines between a proprietary healthcare solutions and the hospital's IT infrastructure have begun to merge.
My question is, to what degree should my PM's obtain IT technical knowledge to be effective. Most of my PM's have their master's in Project Management, would a certification such as CCENT or CCNA be valuable or overkill? The goal would be for my PM's to work within the customer's IT organization and maintatin credability while delivering our solutions. Saving Changes...
Great posts to reinforce the risks for a Project Manager to be both the PM and technical lead.
Just another comment to address credibility for a PM and its good to hear you consider this important. Let me just say that this first starts with you as their manager; select the right PM for the project and the customer. The customer will first consider you have selected the right PM for the project/customer, secondly, make sure the PM has proper support, guidance and empowerment to perform in their role and lastly, provide the PM appropriate feedback, coaching and mentoring.
PMs must earn trust to build upon their credibility daily and they need a foundation of support. An accidental, professional practioner and credentialed PM all need some form of ongoing training; make sure they get it just like your IT staff. However, understand that a project is a project is a project so sending a PM to IT training will not provide the specific soft/hard skill training a PM really requires
PMs need sponsor, functional manager and team support; also make time for your PMs weekly for one on one meetings and regular sponsor meetings. A PMs role is to escalate issues, share bad news as soon as possible and as appropriate they need acknowledgement of their performance from their functional manager and customers to reflect and evalute their continuous improvement and success on the job.
Your PMs are valuable resources to your organization and they will add hugh benefits to realize an organizations ROI and influence customer confidence even when there are IT issues and bumps along the way in their projects.
Here is another thought on technical PM! If a PM does technical contribution to the project and if there is a delay in the project, will the PM tell the truth - (i.e) the project is delayed? Since he is also part of the technical team, he tend to give incorrect status to the stake holders!!
A PM technically contributing to the project becomes a conflict of interest for a PM! If SPI and CPI are < 1, then PM is taken for a ride!
If there are a limited number of staff in the technical organization, it would be common for the project manager to have a high level of technical expertise. However, a full time project manager's technical expertise is rarely current. IT changes so rapidly, that maintaining a high level of competency is difficult. Second, if you're a project manager with high level technical skills - which skills are needed to deliver the project - technical or PM skills?
One of a project manager's key skills is being able to determine what the deliverables should be, and the order in which they should be delivered. That order is developed in concert with the technical team. I know of no project manager that is so skilled in every IT discipline that they could make every decision on their own. Project management is about team building and leading. Technical knowledge - for a PM - is about BS management - you have to know when your technical staff is being overly optimistic. Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Deron, great post. Regrettably, almost always, any discussion regarding how technical a PM should be in a particular business setting gives rise to a flurry of opinion both confirming the need for PMs to be technically competent and the premise that PMs need to be good at PM, and not necessarily technically "deep." This is just about an automatic response by those in the PM community so quick to defend the profession of PMs that the real problem often goes undetected. Interestingly, I have a completely different read and reaction to your post. You asked if a certification such as CCENT or CCNA would be overkill (related to your business objective). Rather than engage in a discussion about whether or not your PMs need to be technical (which is really about knowledge), my immediate reaction to your situation and post is centered not on knowledge, but rather on process, your process. And my thoughts would be, "to what degree do your processes bring about the PM behaviors that you are seeking for your proprietary healthcare solutions and infrastructure projects?" Or to be rude (this is a joke - sort of), do you think that by hiring good PMs that are also good technically that your proprietary healthcare solutions and infrastructure projects will achieve the desired outcomes you stated - work with customer's IT organization and maintain credibility while delivering the solution. IMHO, this is far more a matter of effective and streamlined processes that bring about the outcomes you seek, rather than technical knowledge of your PMs. I can't comment on your specific organization of course, but I would add that many large companies have "legacy" approaches for managing projects that look good on paper at the HQ or EPMO level, but that in reality are not that effective at the field business unit level. Hence, when I seek a desired outcome related to project management, I first look to the process - not the knowledge of the PMs. In fact, I would rather have a great process (effective, streamlined, produces the outcome I seek, etc.) and an average PM, than an average process and a great PM. To beat on this horse a little more, just as you do not want to be let down by staff (PMs and others) with inadequate knowledge, your staff does not want to be let down by an organization (you) with inadequate processes. I never heard Deming say, "Hire a smart PM, fix the problem." It was always, "Fix the process, fix the problem." And lastly, having been to Spring Branch, I would be willing to bet you a dinner (for us southerners, dinner is served between 11 and 2 - yankees call it lunch) at Buck and Ozzy's that if you are not getting the outcome you want, you have a process problem not a PM problem. Saving Changes...
Gabriel Blanc-LaineVP Sales & Marketing| Qtask Inc.Burbank, Ca, United States
That is two different fields to cross train in, and like others have mentioned, actually getting them up to speed and then keeping them honest when problems come up will be harder than the actual training.
To directly answer the question, CCNT or CCNA would really only matter if you need them to maintain Cisco hardware. I would think everything from A+ certification through basic computer technology in the LAN and WAN fields would be the building blocks. Again though, it depends on what your needs are, possibly sending them for MCP certs might prove to be worth wild too. Saving Changes...
Senior Advisor to the CEO| PMISterling, Va, United States
I thought the Gartner Analyst quote in this article was interesting, but I'm not sure that I agree with it.
As Gartner's Michael Hanford, a research director and the summit chair, points out, businesses tend to see IT project management as a distinct discipline or function.
It should not be. "The fact that you happen to be delivering project in the IT space should be no more significant than fact you are delivering a product project, a marketing or an operations project," he says.
Knowledge about the domain helps understanding and communicating about what happens around the project. It helps e.g. what the actual risk mean, or separates nonsense from genuine info.
The closer you are to the operational team (read smaller the project), the more this kind of "help" is needed in my opinion. Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I think you need to be just technical enough to not let anyone else pull the wool over your eyes! Saving Changes...
Simply put, in my opinion a PM does not require technical qualifications, what they do need to do is engaging with technical or specialist support when required. While they do not always need a technical understanding of the solution PMs should always ensure awareness in order to contribute to discussions of options. Leadership in project meetings ensures the session objectives are met and indecision reduced to a minimum. PMs must work closely with operational teams, thats where the technical expertise lies and is called upon...
From my own experience delivered numerous IT projects, and yet I am not a Technical expert ! dont have to be... it is not a requirement! Saving Changes...
Mitch KraytonPresident| Krayton SeminarsDenver, Co, United States
Like all things technical you have understand what tool is able to do and its limitations.
When driving a car, you need to appreciate that you have a transmission and how it controls the speed of the vehicle. You need to know how to recognize its failure and know what to do to get it repaired. You do not need to know how to build one or repair it.
The same for any IT tool. Management has to know what it does, how it works, how it will fit in and what the impact, pro and con, will be to use it. In additional management must know the development, implementation, training, maintenance, update and failure costs to budget diligently.
And before buying any tool, you have to define the need for that tool in such clear terms that the maker of the tool can deliver a tool that will do the work as expected. This lack of communication is the reason most IT projects fail to deliver. Saving Changes...
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