Project Manager job title: overused?

Lot of examples like you stated Stephane. Along the world what organizations wants are subject matter experts not project manager (generally speaking). And as you know is the same discussion inside the project manager community when lot of people think that to be a project manager you have to be an expert in the domain you will work on.

It seems that the corporate lack of understanding about the roles and skills of a legitimate project manager directly translate to their insecurity about hiring a project manager who is not a SME, domain expert or rising engineer/architect (who they expect to have managerial skills and they are often mistaking ongoing managerial skills for project management skills because ongoing managers also have to make sure things get done).

When you consider the percentage of corporate projects that fail for refusal to engage in the legit project management process because of corporate misunderstanding of it's purpose and value, this is not surprising.

I see these ads too. I often get asked "what does a project manager do?", "what does that mean?"...and within my own industry there is often confusion between the role of a Project Manager and a Business Analyst. There are Business Analysts in the healthcare industry who can manage projects for hospitals - which is what I do as a Project Manager. I have a little elevator speech ready when these questions come up - I try to explain that we have a lot of positive energy, experience, training and skills that align with our corporate strategies to help us manage projects from the beginning stage of imagining the project to the end stages well after the deliverable has successfully completed - I try to add insight about lessons learned and project knowledge sharing with other PM's. I talk about our certifications, etc. Our Benefits Realization documents at the end of each project are another way I try to reinforce the important PM role. But there still remains much confusion about project management. It takes all of us continually helping others understand our PM role and realizing the benefits, responsibilities and importance of it.