PMP - Project Management Professional's

[gregariz]

My wife was recently turned down for a project management post because they said she was "too technical". As a result she is studying the PMP course. I've just finished watching one of her course video's and what struck me was that on several occasions they said that the "Project Manager" does not have to have any technical knowledge. I notice in my day job that my company also does not seem to hire technical Project Managers. That concerns me a bit.

What do you all think about the whole PMP phenomena, and the idea of non technical Project Managers?

[Alex]

I happen to have undertaken studies in Project Management by a leader in the field. Here is what I got from it.

The role of the project manager is to initiate a project from loose ideas higher management comes up with and then oversee its delivery within the time, scope and budget. The project manager does not take any technical decisions; for that he is relying on a the team of experts. The tools project managers use do require analytical skills common across 'technical' individuals, however the PM does not need to be familiar with the project down to a level to take technical decisions.

Having said this, it does of course help to be familiar with the project, the broadr industry, stakeholders, the employer etc.

I would encourage your wife to get in touch with the Project Management Institute (http://www.pmi.org/) if she has not already and explore the different certifications they offer.

Also, a good no-nonsense book is All Change: Project Manager's Secret Handbook (Financial Times Management) by Eddie Obeng. It is affordable and very readable.

[Uncle Vernon]

I'd suggest that at least broad technical knowledge is an essential to any project manager.  Equally essential is for a good project manager to be able to delegate and not get caught up every issue which may arise. Engineers often are not good at focus and time management.

The problem I've seen over many year is that while it is recognised that engineers can be poor time/project manager it is seldom recognised that having no clue and an expensive filofax is no basis for good project management.

Our building industry is over represented with supposedly bright young bucks from far off lands with supposed qualifications and no clue in things technical or managerial. 

Good project management requires a little my than an incomplete Gant Chart. It is certainly not about pissing away your sub-contractors hours by demanding them onto a site not ready for their works.  [/raw nerve]

[Mechatrommer]

i once worked with PMC, project management consultancy. if you (leader) have great technical team under you, the leader doesnt have to be technical, all he have to do is to manage his resources (technical team), but as usual, if you have a bit of technical knowledge, it will help to manage your team and lesser risk to be called as a dickhead.

[Bored@Work]

Statements that PMs don't need to have technical knowledge come up again and again. In fact I think it has become more prominent in the last decade. Like it has become more prominent for CEOs to have no clue about the stuff the companies they manage produce.

My short answer from experience: This is bullshit.

My long answer from experience: "I don't have to have technical knowledge" comes from those who went into project management because the failed at everything technical and happened to be too ugly for prostitution (male prostitution included). And it comes from those who aren't interesting in project management, but took a project management job purely as a career step with the idea to get over the dreaded PM job as fast as possible and no qualms about leaving scorched earth behind.

PMs without technical knowledge are making decisions that jeopardize the success of a project, e.g. requiring that the team violates the laws of physics. It doesn't work that they are supposed to listen to their technicians and don't make any technical decisions. Because, formally they rank above all the people in their team, and like any other type of power, it is extremely tempting to exercise and abuse that power. Very few PMs can resist to abuse and exercise their power.

And PMs without technical knowledge can be gamed and bullshitted by their team. The later is often very obvious in software development (although I currently know one HW project where this is also happening).

Have you ever seen a software project full of hype and fanboy technology, and even done with a mixture of programming languages? A 100% buzzword-compatible project? One where the resulting product is bug ridden, hardly meets any of the original specs (specs typically get amended later to fit the lamentable results), are not meeting user's needs, and the project is much delayed? AVR Studio 5 is such an example.

I call these projects the kind of projects that did lack a supervising adult. Because the team successfully managed to game the PM instead of getting strong guidance and direction. Team members managed to put their individual interests and preferences over the project success and weren't put in their place by the PM. Because the PM lacked the technical understanding that the team or team members were bullshiting him or her.

The already mentioned PMI is a good start to learn the formal parts and structure of project management. Although hey did smoke something very nasty when they named their central guide something like "project management body of knowledge". But getting a PMI certification won't help if you don't have a clue.

[Alex]

My short answer from experience: This is bullshit.

It's not bullshit, a PM with background in IT successfully managed a multi-million construction project. Furthermore, PM consultancy firms called in by a company or the goverment to manage a project are, more often than not, not eqquiped with PMs specialising in that field. The role of the PM does not require extensive grasp of the project's technical details.

From what you say these PMs don't seem to be very good at their job: they are not supposed to make such decisions without consultation from the experts in the team and it is their duty to turn the unrealistic scope, delivery time and budget into a realistic project that will require hard work but not miracles from those involved. The role of the PM requires competence in leadership skills too and your example PM seem to have failed in that domain.

Software projects have been traditionally failing at a high rate and this increases to 0% success (scope, time, budget) when the budget hits the six figures mark. CHAOS reports have the figures.

[Bored@Work]

My short answer from experience: This is bullshit.

It's not bullshit,

Yes, it is. It is decades of practical experience. It doesn't matter if the "you don't have to have a clue" rule sounds good and cool, if it doesn't work in practice in general then the rule is bullshit.

In general is the key here. Those pulling those rules out of their arse (because they don't have any scientific proof for such rules) might be the most clever ones and top notch PMs. But they forget that the garden variety PM isn't clever.

You came up with the standard excuse when such made-up rules don't work "Then the PMs were bad". Dude, yes, at least 50% of all project managers are bad. If you make a rule that doesn't work in, lets say, at least 90%, i.e. also work for a large part of the dumb ones, the rule is bullshit.

[Alex]

Practical experience on which side? Manage or managed?

I did say that those PMs were not good at what they are supposed to do, but I did not attribute the failure of a project to the rule that PMs dont need to know technical details. You, however, did.

It is not an excuse, it is derived from the definition of the project manager and their training. Project management is not about deciding the best way to code some functionality, it is about putting the resources in place and delivering to specifications. Do you understand the difference?

Sure, I agree that there are too many incompetent PMs out there, do we need to change the job description of a PM? That is exactly what the PM must not do, get involved in technical details. We still have crime despite policing the streets, is policing the wrong idea that needs to stop? Why do you think an external PM without knowledge of the project or the technical side of it is brought in to review the project plan?

[Mechatrommer]

software project is nothing but a software, each team with a bit of chunk of another "software". the PMC i was involved combined all the discipline in engineering. architecture, civil, ee, mechanical internal deco etc, and software if the project need it, with only one PM as head. if you need a full technical expertise on the PM side, i think we have to wait someone to retire and have worked in every disciplines to be eligible as a PM. studying those alone in school may take you a good 15-30 years.

[Bored@Work]

Now we have reached the "it would work if ..." excuse level. So all it takes are better project managers? But we haven't. And we won't get them now. If you want to have a robust system, i.e. a system in which rules in general work, you have to work with the material you have, can get and can afford, not the mystical stuff you see in science fiction.

While you might want to wait and hope for better project managers in the future there are millions of projects that need to be managed here and now. And the mystical better project manager won't be available for these projects.

I am not saying we should stop policing the streets. I am saying we should have rules that work and take reality into account. To get a system that is robust and predictable, not an "it would work if ..." dream.

[Alex]

You understood from my post something that was in your mind already.

The topic is if technical experience is required to be a PM and the truth is no, it doesn't. We are not talking about why projects fail and even more that they fail because PM's don't have technical experience.

Would I like my PM to have technical experience? Oh yes, it would be useful! Do I need my PM to have technical experience? No, and I would appreciate it if he did not make decisions I am best suited for. I made this clear in the first post and I think we can agree on that.

[Uncle Vernon]

The topic is if technical experience is required to be a PM and the truth is no, it doesn't.

I'd agree. Had the topic been  "is technical understanding required to be a good and effective PM"  then the answer most definitely is, YES it is.

Good PM requires the ability to not become absorbed in all the intricacies and to maintain focus on the task at hand. How can that possibly be achieved when issues and progress reports are issued in the equivalence of another language. How can a PM be proactive if he has no clue of the real cost or time-frame of possible solutions. Without a broad understanding how can a PM have ascertain what he is told is correct other than through trial and error? T&E is a very expensive way to achieve resolution, not something that is going to go over well in shareholders eyes or in public or media scrutiny.

[gregariz]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the replies. I think in my wife's particular case, she had actually been working as a PM in her software group, even though she didn't have the job title, so I'm pretty confident that she actually had the PM skills even if she didn't have the PMP certification, which she is doing now. I should also mention that both she and I have MBA's but our first qualifications were technical.

If I had to guess I would say that from what I see there are actually very few PM's floating around that have both technical and PMP qualifications. I'm uneasy with the idea that the technical qualifications should be any burden. It seems logical to me that both qualifications should be superior to just the PMP alone. I think this is very true since the PMP certification is a relatively easy qualification to gain. I actually think it was corporate politics at play, since the existing PM's were non technical they didn't want to have to modify their speak or thinking to accommodate someone with both.

But I actually think there is something bigger at play that goes to the heart of most creative industries. The idea that a creative person cannot manage or be articulate I think is extremely prejudiced, and represents a real chip on ones shoulder. Just before I wrote this post I was watching the bloomberg channel and a google engineer seemed to me to speak very well, so I think its a little bit rough to be generalizing in a negative way about engineers as presently happens.

See a good engineer on tv
Cutts Believes Google `Doing the Right Thing' for Users

But it speaks to the nature of modern management, its not just project management - business schools are teaching that the general management of companies do not need to know their company products. The problem I have is that when you take this view of management you damage the concept of leadership. When you appoint a non-technical project manager you have instantly removed the reward mechanism for engineers who do a good job to be promoted to management. And because these people are seen as undeserving by the people working under them, they no longer really have natural leadership. To lead, instead they must demand respect, which is very unlikely to work effectively. So I would not make a PMP only appointment ever simply for this reason. I would appoint an engineer to a PM post and then send them to do the relatively easy PMP qualification.

I see little point in settling for a PMP only PM when I could have a technical +PMP. And I think there is a real difference. It has also been my experience that many very poor engineers gravitate to PM's as an exit to engineering. Again they cannot command respect or leadership effectively. I have also found that PM jobs attract alot of aligned technical fields - for example I've seen alot of mechanical engineers and chemists in the PM and Quality management fields. Again I think respect and leadership suffer.

An then there is the issue of seniority. although PMP training does recommend that PM's defer technical decisions to experts this has not been my experience. What happens is typically that their is such friction between the PM and the technical team that the PM, who has seniority, exercises it and makes decisions on their own. Sometimes it works sometimes not, but it can't be optimal. Natural leadership appointments would of cured that potential problem.

And finally since PM's have seniority they do have the capacity to make dangerous decisions and the lack of a technical qualification can be fatal. For example I want a chartered engineer PM making the decisions regarding a new undersea channel tunnel or a new aircraft development. These products simply can't be designed by an executive committee that lacks technical qualifications. I think that is common sense.

So there are lots of things that I think business schools and the PMI have gotten very wrong in their efforts to become legitimate professional's. Some of it is very prejudiced and very unfair IMO.