What does a project manager do?
- Thread starter Orang Utan
- Start date
You can manage:
- Dependencies (the dinner party is a good example)
- Resource allocation (Bob can do bricklaying and plastering. We're behind on the bricklaying. If I move him off plastering, will that help, or make things worse?)
- Budget (Do we need to use overtime? How much will that cost?)
- Foreseeable unforeseeables (I have 10 people. One of them will go sick. I don't know which one)
That's some of the technical discipline. Then there's the touchy feely. You need every one on the team to have faith, so people skills are important. And being able to deliver bad news to management. Not hide problems.
Etc etc.
It is a proper job. If done properly. ;
Summary: Spinning Plates
- Dependencies (the dinner party is a good example)
- Resource allocation (Bob can do bricklaying and plastering. We're behind on the bricklaying. If I move him off plastering, will that help, or make things worse?)
- Budget (Do we need to use overtime? How much will that cost?)
- Foreseeable unforeseeables (I have 10 people. One of them will go sick. I don't know which one)
That's some of the technical discipline. Then there's the touchy feely. You need every one on the team to have faith, so people skills are important. And being able to deliver bad news to management. Not hide problems.
Etc etc.
It is a proper job. If done properly. ;
Summary: Spinning Plates
19sixtysix
Bring me sunshine
In my work project managers deliver non-working and undocumented equipment that maintenance will have to get working before the users can use it
Grrrrrr!
Grrrrrr!
Hollis
bloody furious
Its applied common sense.. Some people do it. Some people need to be taught it. Some people have a vested interest in jargonising it all and making it far more complex than it needs to be.
Vastly overrated as a "skill". Chortle I shall be doing 'Prince2 ' later this year - so i can join the tufty club..
Kanda
Diving wanker
^^ This.
It gets ridiculous at times. Some people over manage and fuck up peoples processes and sink their time into fucking meetings. I could get a fuckton more done if idiots didn't call me into meetings to try and understand my job.
toblerone3
Grrrrr
A project manager is a manager with a task which is limited by time (deadline); cost (budget) and quality (quality control). On a higher level there are programme managers. Programmes consist a number of of projects. So a programme manager manages project managers. Yes gant charts, Microsoft project and Prince2 and shiploads of jargon are involved.
What is a manager who is not a project manager. He or she is an operations manager. But these days there are fewer and fewer operations managers and more and more project and programme managers.
What is a manager who is not a project manager. He or she is an operations manager. But these days there are fewer and fewer operations managers and more and more project and programme managers.
toblerone3
Grrrrr
I don't think its cheaper. Probably more expensive actually. But when a programme is complete the manager can be got rid of. Its jargon designed to enable the sacking of managers when specific tasks are completed.
Kanda
Diving wanker
So it's a shit world all around.
grit
an ugly force for good
Huh do you have any real world experience of this? First a good PM is worth their weight in gold on a big project and usually can be the reason for success (or failure).
Its a difficult but a highly skilled job. When you have a good PM there is a noticable positive impact on everyones job.
Kanda
Diving wanker
A good PM is worth their weight in gold, I agree.
But I've mainly been involved with shit ones, that got their job via nepotism, and had to endure them.
I got into IT before the MCSE boom.. then came the MCSE boom and loads of idiots came on the scene.. am sure you know the drill...
grit
an ugly force for good
Same, but there was plenty of idiots back in the acoustic coupler days aswell. I
Kanda
Diving wanker
The tech changes year on year, but the basic principles have remained the same for decades. My favourite book, on the occasion I've needed to educate "the management", is 'The Mythical Man Month'. Written in the sixties, the author having worked on some massive IBM projects. Lots of it still holds.
kabbes
First intersubjective, then internalised
I've worked with a handful of proper, specialist project managers. It's been on projects involving more than a dozen people with budgets in the hundreds of thousands and deliverables worth millions, taking upwards of half a year. The project would have died without the manager's expertise. Died on its arse.
Project management for small-scale and repeat projects should be able to be adequately performed by the team leader, however.
Project management for small-scale and repeat projects should be able to be adequately performed by the team leader, however.
foo
dirtysweet
yeh, i've got a regular job title but i manage several projects within that job role. i am the team leader - check me out.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
now someone's finally ringing bells!
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
kabbes
First intersubjective, then internalised
Are you willing to countenance the notion that your direct experience might be a teeny, tiny microcosm of the total experience of project management?
foo
dirtysweet
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
no, not really. a couple of friends of mine are project managers and have completely different mindsets to the ones i've experienced in my work. so different, that i thought it was worth asking the question. and it seems from the answers that project managers are pivotal, so shit ones really screw things up for everyone and good ones you don't really notice cos everything goes well.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
of course, people are awfully defensive on this thread!
kabbes
First intersubjective, then internalised
That's more the fact of it, combined with the point I made before that they are only really needed as specialists for sizable projects. Bringing them in to small-scale projects is inviting excess bureaucracy.
kabbes
First intersubjective, then internalised
Well, you asked the question, got lots of responses of what the skills are and when they are necessary and then your next post ignored all of that and just quoted the person who slagged them off. It hardly gave the impression that you were being open to expanding your horizons.
But that's water under the bridge now, so enough said.
foo
dirtysweet
yup.
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