Does a PM Need To Be a Technical Expert?

My current project has been getting rather intense lately, which has not given me much time to post anything on this blog. But now I’m winding down from the Thanksgiving holiday and there seems to be a few spare minutes in the day.

I had been thinking recently about what makes an effective project manager. I’ve seen many named and de facto project managers over the years who have been assigned to manage technical projects. Most often the primary qualification is that they have technical experience that is directly related to the project. Sometimes these managers are successful and sometimes not. So is it the best strategy to appoint a PM with technical skills?

In the IT world, we are rather obsessed with technical knowledge and ability. The IT field has only been around in a serious way for about 40 years now. In the beginning, the IT people were scientists and would work on their machines in white lab coats. No one would dream of asking any of them if they had any idea about how to manage projects or people. The IT field has retained that scientific and technical bias to this day. A programmer or analyst with the best technical chops was very often elevated to Lead Analyst or even Project Manager based solely on his tech expertise. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it was a disaster.

The profession of project manager has grown up primarily in areas such as construction and engineering. Those fields realized that the ability to organize and manage projects and people was a skill in its own right and was perhaps even secondary in importance to technical knowledge. Those fields still tended to use technical experts as PMs, but technical expertise was not the only criteria.

In the 1960s, John Zachman, then with IBM, began to realize that the computer industry was in a crisis. Building robust, bug-free systems that met business needs and staying within budget seemed to be an impossible goal. Many projects failed and many more went vastly over budget. He looked over at industries that made things rather than software and observed that they seemed to be very successful – planes could fly, buildings went up and didn’t bust the budget, widgets got made and sold for a profit.

John studied some of these industries in detail and developed his Enterprise Architecture as a way to formalize all of the aspects of any organization and how they would have to work together to create a functioning Enterprise. His Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework (http://www.zifa.com) focused on all the details required to plan and design systems that could run an Enterprise. He did not focus on project management, since that was not what he was looking for.

I believe Zachman’s assumption was that project management was a well-understood discipline and that it did not need to be covered explicitly in his framework, although many aspects of project management can be found in his matrix. Good project management would be essential to drive the implementation of this framework and the lack of this may explain why so few organizations have been able to successfully implement it.

Enterprise architecture and project management have distinct synergies and overlapping areas of application. Any architect needs to know how to manage projects and a PM working in IT needs to understand how to do architecture (or the PM needs to have a good architect on his team).

Both the architect and the PM need to be able to understand the technology they are working with. If they are not conversant with the tools and methods that are being employed on their projects they soon become snowed under with terms and concepts they do not understand. And they can become overly dependent on the technical members of their team.

The fact is however, that technical knowledge is easier to come by and more widely available than project management skills, especially in the IT arena. Many lead analysts and programmers finding themselves in the PM role have no idea how to plan and manage a project. They know how to put together the technical details, but projects under their lead are in fact not under their control at all. Very often their senior managers are in effect acting as project managers. This leads to frustration on both sides, as the technical leader feels he is not in control and the manager does not have the time for the day-to-day process of managing an ongoing project.

The ideal situation is a PM with the right mix of technical and project management knowledge and experience. But it is often difficult to find one individual who meets this criteria. I would urge any senior manager to ensure that their technical personnel get PM training and that when putting someone in charge of a critical project they look first to find a person with PM knowledge and experience and make the technical qualifications secondary. You can always find the right technical resources to help the PM where he might need it.

As for myself, as I’ve said before on this blog, I love the technical stuff. But I have realized that if I want my own projects to succeed, I have to understand more then just the technical aspects. I would recommend to anyone in IT to improve his or her project management skills as a priority. It will certainly pay off.