Project Manager job title: overused?

What Andrew is saying Eduard is there are jobs other than project managers, like business analysts and consultant, that do project management.

It can be valid to show project management skills without ever having held the title.

Adrian: I spend my time here to learn from all comments and to improve myself. And I learn a lot when reading your comments. As you know we disagree and let me say this: you, as Project manager, must be a subject matter expert in the field to take decisión about Project mangement. But you, as Project manager, must not take any other type of decisions. In fact, is the worst thing you can do. Your duty as Project manager is to assure the definition and following of a change process where you and your team are accountable and responsable to créate all the information related to evaluate the impacts and to present it to people that must take the decisión. And believe me, companies that hire Project managers that are subject matter experts are searching for the last one.

While I won't dispute that some technical background can help the PM frame information and decisions, I don't see myself as a SME, Adrian.

If I have not obtained the best technical decision from my project team, then I have failed as a facilitator and communicator.

My job is to do what is best for the project, not the product.

Adrian, I can understand your point of view. But a Project Manager is a Manager not a SME. The key point for me is Pms must have some experience in the domain they have to manage for. They should delete their SME behaviors but they must be iable to challenge the SMEs part of their teams. PM and SME roles are fully disconnected. A PM that rect as a SME can loose any credibility with his/her ability to manage the project successfully.
Both roles must be respected but are not compatible.

I do not agree with this. PM should be expected to be an SME in the PM arena. Otherwise, they would be in a different role. The way I read the statement, is that either the PM is a SME or useless. As been said, the PM is not there to be an expert on the product, but rather the project. Ideally, the right team should be in place for support of the product, requirements, and product related decisions.

That said, the PM should have some knowledge of the area, enough to understand what is being discussed. With respect to IT (since that is where I am), I understand code and database speak, and generally, the proper structure and rules, etc., as I used to code, but don't ask me to open up Visual Studio and SSMS and do the actual work.

The PM should see across the field, not be stuck in the weeds.