

Why Project Managers Are More Likely to Become Linchpins - carusen
http://corporategeek.info/why-project-managers-are-more-likely-become-linchpins

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rkuester
Why are PMs at technology companies often the corporate drone types that only
pretend to add value by retweeting status from the people who really know
what's going on? Without understanding, they play a destructive game of
telephone and buzzword bingo.

Shouldn't engineers with leadership gifts lead more projects where engineering
plays a major role? Am I being too engineering-centric to think that suitably
gifted engineers could grok the non-engineering aspects of a project better
than a spreadsheet pusher can understand the engineering component?

Maybe I've just never worked with a good PM.

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kenjackson
You have never worked with a good PM. I've worked with incredible PMs. I've
seen these PMs walk into meeting with senior developers and architects, and
pretty much be the only person asking the right question regarding how to get
the product shipped.

And that for me has been one of the defining characteristics of a strong PM.
Good questioning ability. Ability to skip to the chase. And they have a
suprisingly strong grasp of dependencies. When architect A says, "this is
coming in a bit late" they almost instantly are getting the PMs and architects
from team X, Y, and Z in the room because they know theres an indirect
relationship to these teams also.

I've only worked with one bad PM in my life. We fired him after two months.
The difference in productivity, confidence, and general life enjoyment between
an bad and good PM is pretty enormous.

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slantyyz
My experience in the services realm is that there are way more bad PMs than
good PMs.

I've seen way too many PMs too afraid to push back on the customer with
respect to scope changes who also have no idea how the technical staff think
and therefore have no idea how to communicate with them.

I've also found that PMs with more certifications tended to have less of a
clue in terms of how to run a project, but that's just my experience.

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hkarthik
Like others mentioned, I've also come across more bad PMs than good ones. It's
tainted my general view of PMs, and I rarely recommend that anyone go into
that line of work. It's all too easy to fall into ineffective roles as a PM,
and many dysfunctional orgs exist that actively encourage it.

That being said, there are a few good ones, but they mostly come from Agile
organizations.

Here are the qualities I've found in the good PMs: \- Strong technical
background and highly intelligent. They went into PM not because they were
weak engineers, but because they wanted a change.

\- They know when to get out of the way of the engineers when they need to.
They provide a healthy amount of autonomy rather than being glorified
taskmasters.

\- They can provide effective "air cover" for the engineers when other groups
start hassling them and slowing them down. They view the removal of obstacles
as their most important role.

\- They know progress is best demonstrated by working applications, not specs,
spreadsheets, or charts. They strive to have something demonstrable to the
project stakeholders at the end of every iteration.

\- They are generally low ego, and don't play political games. They strive for
results above all else.

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carusen
Totally agree. Would add one more: when there is a problem, they never hide it
or ignore it. They face it in a very hands on way and clearly articulate it to
all involved in the project.

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ganjianwei
More likely than who? Anyone else in an organization?

Also, the elaboration of "Providing deep domain knowledge" explains it as deep
domain knowledge of product management. The is akin to saying the engineers
have deep domain knowledge of engineering, and doesn't explain why project
managers are more likely to be lynchpins than other positions. But then again,
he didn't mention what these other positions were.

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techdmn
Am I the only one who found it funny that the post ended with a link to a
PowerPoint document?

