Field knowledge V.S Project management knowledge

Most of my roles as a PM have been in a domain new to me. I would agree it's more difficult to "lead" teams who already have extensive domain knowledge when the PM is a newbie. But as I have said before in relation to similar conversations, that is what experts are for. You get expert knowledge from either inside the business or outsourced. While domain knowledge is always an advantage, more than often it is not necessary for managing projects especially when domain experts are within reach.

Yes but those experts are going to make critical decisions that impact the success of the project and you as a PM have absolutely no control over them.

In the above circumstances you can still manage projects but you will have a lot of critical issues beyond your control. From my experience a lot of projects went overbudget because the experts have either made decisions that proved not to be good or they were unable to finish the work on time. The PMs were unable to do anything about this.

If the PM does have domain knowledge, will he be able to make better technical decisions than the other experts? Maybe yes, maybe no but at least he would be in more control over the project.

I know a lot of people will feel offended by what I am about to say and I do appologies but a PM that does not have good domain (field) knowledge is seen by the project team members as a glorified secretary. That's a fact and you can't do anything about it.

The fact that the PM learns about the domain would help a little in communication but still such a PM would be seen as a glorified secretary and not a leader.

Still what project team members think about the PM does not matter that much. A PM that does not have domain knowledge is still valuable for the project it is just that the value is not in leading the team. Some companies in IT projects designate so called project technical managers to lead the team so the PMs only have to deal with these technical managers and not with the other team members.

If you are a PM without domain knowledge you should forget about leading, mentoring, coaching, inspiring, etc the team as you can't do that. You should focus more on the pure project management activities and try to bring value in this field.

Many companies hire project management interns from fresh college graduates meaning that domain knowledge is not considered important for the project manager role. These PMs however should forget about leading or managing the project team members. In time they may end up managing, as line managers, other project managers.

You will learn more about the domain by simply working in it than any course or certification can provide.

Curious. What is your background aside from university?

Zaid,

It helps to better understand the domain in which you are working and there are several online courses, platforms like edX to help you get that overall knowledge, a kind off bird's eye view. Also, it is always a great idea to experiment in the early years of your career. All the best!

Kavitha

Zaid,

I agree with Sergio and Kiron! I’ve put together a fairly long response as this is one of the most important questions impacting our profession, and it’s also one of my favorite subjects - so, my apologies for the length.

PMI made a course correction in 2016 with the rollout of the “PMI Talent Triangle” and basically stated the following. As a profession, we need to transform if we wish to remain relevant and competitive in the marketplace. This transformation requires project professionals to have a foundation (i.e., a knowledge foundation) built on the following three elements: 1) Technical, 2) Leadership, and 3) Strategic and Business Management expertise. They went further and stated that this mix is the “ideal skillset,” and is the recipe for a successful practice.

With all due respect to Luis, the orchestra conductor analogy wherein “the conductor does not need to know how to play an instrument” is ambiguous in environments where constant change is the status quo. And in today’s “fill-in-the-blank transformation” environments, constant change is about the only norm we have, so we need to find a different balance.

I’m a firm believer in project professionals having “architectural awareness,” which is an approach for navigating domains (both business and technical) through architectural knowledge. Architectural knowledge is non-engineering big-picture knowledge that focuses on the strategy and structure of domains. Having architectural awareness does NOT mean that you are a subject matter expert or have technical delivery skills; it simply means you can Understand, Interpret, and Communicate within a domain using architectural knowledge.

An architecturally aware project professional will be able to (represented as competency levels):

- COLLABORATE: Comprehend, keep-up-with, and materially participate in domain-specific discussions using audience vernacular.
- MODERATE: Moderate discussions through acumen (i.e., keen insight) level knowledge of the subject matter.
- CHALLENGE: Challenge-out resolutions through theory (i.e., principled) level knowledge of the subject matter.

I recently conducted a poll with the following question, “If you could download domain knowledge into your being (outside of the technical PM domain), which of these purposes would influence you the most.” With around 80 respondents so far, the poll ranks as follows:

- Enhanced capability to lead through influence (31%)
- Career advancement as a project professional e.g., from PM to program manager (17%)
- Improved ability to collaborate and communicate across the project team (14%)
- A path to move from one domain to another as a PM (10%)
- Higher quality outputs and outcomes (7%)
- On-boarding my “Next-Gen PM” brain (7%)
- Advancing our profession (9%)
- Increased agility when responding to change (5%)

These items represent some of the “value propositions” of Architectural Awareness. So, to answer your question: You should gain architectural knowledge (as described above) in both the IT and Business domains related to your current and future projects.

Simple and right to the point, That was absolutely and utterly amazing.However, Is there any source were i can learn more about the three points you talked about them (moderate, collaborate and challenge) like techniques to use, More insight, etc ?