As a software project manager, do you need to be very familiar with coding

But the issue surfaces, how to gain such knowledge and skills?

@Taoufik, the only thing that makes a project which is initiated to create a software product (is not the same to create a system) is the software intangibility which impacts in project progress meassure. It does mean that when you ask for progress to a developer and she/he said "60%" the next thing is asking why they are saying that. The way the progress is measure is the key difference from other type of products. In other type of products which are tangible you can check if 60% is achieved in the reality. In software you can not do that unless you stablished the way of measurement in advance which is not easy for multiple factors (for example, measure progress based in lines of code). With that under consideration there is no difference than other type of projects. My first background is software/systems but I led projects in lot of different domains or type of products where software is not involved at all and they were from atomic plant construction to SARS vaccine research for example.

There is no one way gain the knowledge or skills. For me I was lucky to get some projects initially where i could learn about SDLC and its nuances with the tech teams and then apply it while delivering critical projects. Finding some great material online is also not difficult these days. Can also have somebody as a mentor or guide. Its a choice, people can either find projects to learn or learn and then find projects :).

Thomas,

You deserve a thousand likes for this compelling answer, you touched the pain (SW PM without prior coding experience will face acceptance problem).

I think the PM without such experience, must learn deeply about the acceptance criteria from his/her development team.

@Sergio, added point (progress measurements) is really crucial, that is why frameworks like SCRUM, KANBAN, etc. being adopted to solve this issue.

Just to comment @Taufik frameworks you mentioned will not solve the problem. Kanban is not a framework, is a method. Kanban is well known and super used in manufacturing from long, long time ago. I encourage people that want to use Kanban to go to factories to learn how it works. Scrum is a framework but because is a framework there is no line about how to meassure the progress. Is up to you filll it up with tools and techniques to do that and other type of things. So, the problem still remains: intangibility. If you are working in construction projects if somebody said you that at the end of one day you will get 50% of a 2mts wall done then you can see that. If somebody said the same for a piece of software then you are in trouble except you put clear for the very begining how to meassure it (lines of code, functions, etc etc). The good news is there are lot of methods that works and have been developed from long time ago about the matter.

Trying to add something to @Prakhar post if you need to add skills about software project measures there are lot of literature that will help on that. Is the same if you need to use Earned Value Management for controlling not software projects, including you can use EVM for software projects too. In my case, when I have to switch from domain to domain and just in case I have to learn about specific ways for measuring progress for the domain I searched about the method, I learned it and I put it in practice. All the methods are the same in essence, just to make basic maths. The important thing is the data people give you to transform it into information after doing the calculations.