Techniques to Overcome Industry knowledge

Career Development Education Strategy

John Scott Project Manager| World Synergy Warren, Oh, United States

Hello, I have recently moved into the PM role in my company. We have 4 departments (Technology-my old department), Application Develeopment, Marketing for other business' including eCommerce and Web Design and NetSuite Implementation Partner.

I lack alot of Technical skill in Web Design and Applications dev but am now managing the projects. I know I dont need to be a SME of these to manage projects per se but the teams seem to think I should.

What are your thoughts of how to overcome that.

Posted: Feb 25, 2020 1:01 PM

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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina

Feb 26, 2020 9:45 AM

Replying to John Scott

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Hello Sergio,

Thank you the links I will certainly check those out. appreciate your insight

You are welcome. I hope it helps you. Just to comment, while my background is software/system engineering I had (and I still) manage programs/projects from lot of differents domains using what I stated above. As you know, no matter you are leading programs/projects inside the organization you are working for, the components are totally diverse and belong to totally different organizations business units.

Posted: Feb 26, 2020 9:50 AM (Updated by author: Feb 26, 2020 9:50 AM)

Daire Guiney Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Dear John,

I would be a little worried if your team or colleagues are saying you do not have the relevant experience to do your job.

After all you probably had to go through a whole process and approval by your superiors in order to be selected for the new role so they have confidence in you ability and so should those that you work along side.

As a project manager, you need to leverage you people skills and you technical skills to overcome any shortfalls in your knowledge.

Some project manager approach is to be upfront with their team, say there are new to this piece of technology and look for advice and guidance. I would not be an advocate of this approach especially if you are managing a new team.

Another approach is to manage the people that manage the technology and then you then only have to worry about the team. This approach can work but career wise you may feel like you are going backwards.

The last approach would be a hybrid approach, were you get to grips with the technology by understanding the solutions at a very simple level and scale up your understanding according to each technical problem that you arrive at. Learning as you go. You must be well prepared for all technical interactions with you team, ask as many relevant questions as possible to get a better understanding of the solutions at hand.

A lot of web development is plug and play and software reuse or using web plugins. If you understand the underlying principles of web development then you are more on the design end than the coding and technical end. Whatever route you choose, do not be put of by what you don't know and see it as a way to increase you skill base and technical knowledge.

Daire

Posted: Feb 26, 2020 2:22 PM (Updated by author: Feb 26, 2020 2:24 PM)

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