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Project Management For Programmers?
welshdave asks: "I'm a senior web developer in a medium sized company where the project managers have no programming experience of any sort. I'm of the opinion that project managers should understand the projects that they're managing and want to move into project management myself. I'm aware that I may meet resistance from the current project managers - many of them have been hired with no previous experience of anything. Previous suggestions to senior management that myself and other developers would feel better with a technical person running projects have been dismissed. As a result we are routinely told to skip testing or to implement the impossible, with an emphasis on how things look rather than how well things actually work. Has anyone else found the barrier to project management is their technical knowledge. How did you get past it?"
I think that a certain lack of detailed knowledge about what is possible and what is not might be the key to successful project management. Yes, an impossible task assignment is probably going to cause a little confusion among the techs, but it can also be eye-opening in the sense that it teaches them about what people want. Techs commonly have a certain close-mindedness about how things should be done which can be very unhealty to a project.
I found that it was easier to sit down with my PM and asked then the one thing they needed to make their job easier. If it was half way reasonable I went out of my way to give that to them ... in turn they seemed more willing
to listen to reason and help form a project
timeline that was 1/2-way based on reality.
chongo (was here)
As a developer I've found that most management-types don't give a hoot about technical details, or much of anything else that a heads-down developer might care about.
What will get attention is an understanding of business need, an attention to detail in terms of reporting progress and delivering systems that work, and positive attitude.
As a manager I get very tired of hearing about the programmers, sysadmins, etc. complaining that such-and-such can't be done, or otherwise blocking progress. Much more often than not things that "can't be done" just require a re-statement of the problem and some creative application of simple ideas.
My recommendation would be to make a friend or at least the aquaintance of one of the project manager's bosses, and just talk. Don't attack the current project managers style -- that would make their boss look bad. Don't complain about the impossibility of whatever. Mention that you have an idea of how to accomplish some objective. Show that you have some clue as to what the managers are interested in. Show that you have some interest in the companies performance. Be prepared to give out some 'write ups' that show a very clear train of thought and that make a clear recommendation up front, with backup material and dialogue exploring alternatives explaining why the recommendation makes sense.
If that doesn't work, then get a job with a company that has a clue. They're out there.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Have you demonstrated leadership ability through mentoring or project leading?
Do you communicate with customers well?
Do you appear as someone who would be a Santa Claus manager?
Is your upper management (not your immediate superiors) a bunch of clueless morons? Do they have strong points that make them suited for the leadership positions that they hold?
If you are looking to be in a leadership/management position, it would be better to stay where you are and learn the ropes, IMO. So many managers come straight out of development at one company and louse everything up at their new company as inexperienced PMs. Unless it's been made clear to you that the only way you're going to move into management is by killing a current manager, stay put and look for opportunities where you can.
Talk with the boss, if the company is not so big that you are completely alienated from the upper management then you have the chance to befriend those people and politick your way into an authority position.
Yes, we all know that leadership positions should be based on knowledge and track record and all those other good things, but in reality, you'll never get the positions you want unless you can make the right people understand exactly what you want.
I have been pwned because my
Good project managers need a different set of skills than system architects. Project managers think in terms of timelines, tasks and dollars. Architects think in terms of system components, their interactions, user requirements and technology. While there are some people who can do both well, they are quite rare as they require fairly different ways of thinking.
Anyway, I'll bet dollars to donuts that the resistance you face from upper management has more to deal with the fact that you put the system before the company. They want project managers that put the company (or client) first. Big suprise, eh? If you want to lead projects, explain how you (or rather, people like you) can help the company make more money or make the client happier while spending the same amount of money (which, should lead to more money for the company). It's pretty much as simple as that. Cheers
Some books on Extreme Programming might help, too. Even if you do not plan to use it, they show how to share responsibilities between management and programmers. It all boils down to:
- Management decides what will be done (business value blah blah).
- The programmers decide how long it's gonna take
- Management sets the priorities.
This helps to avoid impossible deadlines and to keep up with high quality.PMI has all you need to know about certification and there are PMI meetings just about everywhere". Attend a few of those and you'll either be networked enough to improve things or fins a better job.
No Zen is good zen
One thing both you and the project manager need to understand is:
;)
The project manager deals with the business side of things.
The technical lead deals with the technical side of things.
So while he may be setting (or have forced upon him) aspects such as deadlines, you need to control scope, methodology and quality. Communicate with him constantly. Imply (if not state explicitly) that you need to work on resource allocation, something he may be trying to plan for you right now. to have everything stated down on paper is best for both of you, you can at least then agree or disagree and sort things out.
It may also help to implement a proper development strategy you can agree on - if he won't listen, just escalate the issue. One that is tried and tested is a good bet, whether it's Extreme programming (a good suggestion) or something coming from the business side of things.
Whichever it is, the problem here seems to arise from a lack of definability of responsibility and roles, and that's what needs to be set and agreed upon so you can both do your job properly! He's probably as exasperated at you at the moment
Fross
(a technical architect working as a project manager!)
I've had managers before that varied from well experienced, technically, to not at all. Rarely was I asked to perform the impossible. And in those cases where it was impossible, it really was impossible. I simply pointed this out to the manager ... and I explained in detail why that was the case. In all cases things got corrected. Maybe I'm not so closed-minded as some techies out there, and I know most everything is possible. The better managers I found came to me with the ideas of what they were considering doing, and asked me to prepare a report on the feasibility and costs (mostly in hours of work) of doing it. I usually included an impact analysis as well. But you can be sure that if I tell my manager that it is impossible, then it really is impossible. Usually the truth is "it'll cost ya". Maybe techies need to learn to say that more often.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Have you considered that you might not actually need to use all these 'new-fangled techniques'? And that your out-dated project manager might know that, since they have experience of doing similar tasks without the need for those techniques?
Beware the CV-driven project (or resume-driven project, to use the American form). It has every wonderful technique under the sun attached to it, with the latest and most exciting tools.
Almost always fails. Almost always ends up being rewritten at the last minute, dropping lots of the high-flying ideas and going back to more tried-and-trusted techniques. Worse, it normally has the older techniques shoved in under a superficial wrapper which is used to say that they're actually implemented with the wonderfully new techniques.
Don't write off experience. Many project managers are rubbish, many have outdated field knowledge, but outdated field knowledge does not necessarily equate with rubbish project management.
Cheers,
Ian
You're on what's called a death march project. (See AntiPatterns, chapter 7, Software Project Management AntiPatterns).
Never work with a project manager who hasn't been a developer himself. Find a better employer - there's no way you can really succeed where you are now. Your projects will fail, be late, overrun budget, be of sub-standard quality, all of which are things that will ultimately reflect on your CV's. Naturally, any smart people in your projects all know this and work morale will erode.
Suggested reading
Me? Got 20 years in this business. Lot's of projects.
If you can't find a better employer, become a project manager yourself, it's not rocket science. Read up, take a PM course, do it the way it should be done.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Supervisors supervise. Most companies are currently deploying the managed type of internal structure, with the theory that a manager can manage anything. Fewer companies are using the supervised type of internal structure. Both methods have their pro and cons. But in the long run a supervised company will have fewer employees with higher salaries, but it will cost less to operate.
Get a free ipod.
Until recently, I was the development manager at a fairly large internet company; we had project managers who knew very little about software development, database design or how to run software projects. Do you know why ? because that was my job.
Whatever you may think, technology is not the most important part of the project - delivering what the business wants and making the right trade-offs to get that done is what matters. The intellectual purity of our great code is wonderful, but who cares if it gets delivered 6 months after it's needed ?
The project manager's job is to work out what needs to get built and by when; they need to get all the external dependencies sorted out, ensure the requirements are either known or the person(s) who controls those requirements is available when required, get the money and resources sorted out, and work with a techie on how to get the deliverables built in time.
I was that techie - and it worked pretty well. The project manager asks for stuff by a certain date, I work with the rest of the team to see what we'd need to do to make that happen, I negotiate with the PM on what is and is not in scope, and get the techies to start with whatever needs to happen to get the project done.
Every couple of days, I sit down with the Project Manager to agree out where we are, re-negotiate dates/resources etc. if required, assess new requirements, maybe work out in more detail what the plan for the next phase looks like. If we have to cut corners - and this does happen, coz we don't live in a perfect world - I work with the developers to see what we can cut that will have the least effect on the quality - the PM doesn't make that call, I do.
Project Management requires skills I don't have - I don't understand the commercial pressures on the company, I don't understand the legal framework we're working in, I don't have the patience to build and update Gantt charts, I don't enjoy endless meetings or chasing people for every little detail of their deliverabes. The project managers know this - they don't think any less of me, just as I respect the fact they couldn't design a database schema to save their lives.
So, I would suggest trying to form a good working relationship with your project manager by trying to understand what they do for a living, understand that there is more to a project than the technical deliverables, learn to speak their language, and offer alternatives when they ask for the impossible.
The attitude of most of the posts in this subject has been "huh, we're 200 times smarter than those idiots running the project, they're so stupid they couldn't blah blah blah". Hey, if you're so smart, it's your job to use that intellgence to move the project forward, not whine about how what a bad job everyone else is doing.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
As a technical person, skills that you will need to gain in order to be a successful PM will include
- Understanding the business context and business drivers
- Managing client relationships (even for internal clients)
- Estimating and planning skills
- Tracking progress against plan - and taking appropriate action (pay attention to this one!)
- An understanding of what timescales are realistic. For example, is it realistic to estimate design:code:test in the ratio 3:2:1? (answer: no).
- Understand that you need to make it possible for the client to change their mind half-way through
- Delegation skills (you can't do it all yourself, you know!) and motivational skills (i.e. understand the kinds of things you can / can't ask of people).
- Risk analysis/mitigation
- Personal organisation and time management
- (In some shops) Project accounting skills
Also, don't underestimate how much work this is. If you are team leading (i.e. working for a PM) then you can expect to lead a team of up to 8 and have the interaction with those staff and the PM take up 100% of your time (i.e. no time left for coding anything yourself). If you are a PM, you won't be able to directly supervise that many staff, because you have the added responsibility of steering the ship. Techies-turned-PMs are frequently tempted to take on the odd technical task - but resign yourself to the fact that you will have to delegate it to one of your staff in order for it to get done on time.If you are having difficulty communicating the impossibility of a task, consider making a weekly/monthly report document that shows progress against plan and the outstanding issues and risks. Many of these will not change from week to week, but putting them there provides one place where (s)he can refer to them.
If something is impossible, then demonstrate in the report why it is impossible, and suggest an alternative. When presenting a problem, your many many times more likely to be successful in getting things changed if you also suggest a workable and realistic solution.
If your "managers" have no technical experience who writes the specifications that you aim to implement?
If they present you with some kind of brief, insufficient description of the project, you need to write out something more specific, that you can actually work too. You learned, as I learned, in cs 101, that you shouldn't start working on a problem until it has been clearly defined. You learned, as I learned, that if you start programming without a clear goal in mind, you won't know when you "finished".
So you write this description. Get your fellow team members, if you have any, on side. Then take it to your manager, and get them to read it, and sign off on it. If their original design has some impossible "feature" in it, maybe this is where you explain, in writing, where it is impossible. If it isn't really impossible, just very difficult, and in your technical opinion, of marginal utility, this is where you present your bosses with an honest prediction of the cost of their pet feature. If you explain to them that their pet feature will make the project take twice as long, or three times as long, will they really still want you to do it? Or will they say, "Oh shit, well in that case forget it."
If they really don't know what they are doing, then they will probably fear a paper trail that documents that you warned them the pet feature would double the time to implement.
If your boss is an asshole, and says something like, "If you can't do it I will get someone who can!" Or, "If you can't do it within this time constraint I will get someone who can!" Call his or her bluff. If their pet feature really is impossible to implement, they won't find anyone else who can do it.
Revise your document to reflect the choices they made. Then work to this document. If they wanted you to implement their pet feature, even though you explained it would double the time to implement, you have protected yourself against the complaint that you are behind schedule. Document your work. Each time you complete one of the milestones in your original memo, refer back to your memo.
So, are you doing tasks which are really the job of the technical manager? Without getting a corresponding raise? Well, yes. But you did, after all, want to move into management, didn't you?
If you do a good job implementing what you promised in your memo will they reward you with a promotion, a raise?
I don't know. But you have acted with integrity.
If it comes time for your annual performance review, is this the time to explain that you have already been shouldering responsibilities that are really management responsibilities?
Then, the next time you are in one of those post mortems because your useless PM fscked up, tear his/her project apart in front of some senior managers. Point out the flaws. Suggest how things could have been done better and how to get things back on track. Have purdy gant and pert charts and so on to back it all up. Know the facts and figures. Don't directly blame the PM, but leave the implication hanging. For bonus points walk the walk after talking the talk and deliver what you suggested.
Do it right and you'll get a fat bonus, pay rise, satisifaction of an incompetent leaving your life and kudos from your colleagues.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Based on my experience I can't understand why anybody would want to become a project manager. It's a rotten thankless job and you've got zero job security. You're basically being squeezed between management, who hands you an impossible job and to few resources to do it and the techies who cant deliver the goods fast enough. While this goes on you have to do a lot of political infighting to steal more resources for your project, prevent other projects from stealing your resource's and competing with the other project managers to look good in order to still have a job in six months. Being a technical lead is a better job by far (been there) but only if you work with a pm who is actually listening to you otherwise you are a perfect candidate for a scapegoat... The real trick is to focus very hard on requirements even if this means that analysis drags on for ever and the pm is pesting you to get it over with. Make a document that can stand up in court and don't accept any changes without extra resources or a reduction in other functionality. Make a formal procedure for these changes (they will happen). And when the shit hits the fan: ALWAYS SIDE WITH THE TECHIES. The techies are mostly honest and rarely play political games. The pm's are always up to something and ready so sacrifice you in a heartbeat if it helps them in their games.
TCAP-Abort
Unless you own the company, let them make their mistakes. Put in your advice, and if they take it and benefit, so be it, but otherwise, you can - and under certain circumstances should - move on at their loss. It's not your company to run, and if the company fails, it's not your fault. Constructively critise, but don't undermine the managers opinions.
;) )
Don't blame the mangers, either - someone put them there, and I have seen poor management come from resentment towards techies as much as incompetence. They are people, get to know them, and you may find that they agree with you in assessing their own shortcomings. From that admission you have options - management need not imply dictation.
Do your personal due diligence, but if the owners don't ask for your help, don't go out of your way to offer it. Save your energy for bigger stakes, IMHO. ("Owners" is vague, I know, but this is slashdot, and I'm being sweepingly vague
I worked for the Australian subsidiary of Wang Labs, at the time when Wang was the #2 computer company in Australia.
Their R&D department was surging from strength to strength, until the Director made the decision to recruit staff from the sales support team to work as project managers.
Never in my whole computing career was I immersed into such a political cesspit. These posturing pretenders sold out us R&D engineers to the most ridiculously stupid deadlines and functional requirements, skipping testing, fudging demos, and crafting a clever spin which transferred the perceived blame to the engineers for failure to deliver.
After months of being unable to focus on a project, due to constantly moving goalposts and political bitching, I resigned. One week later, most R&D staff were laid off, and a couple of years later, Wang Labs went Chapter 11.
In my 2 jobs following, the project managers were veteran engineers, who played an active and respected part in all aspects of the projects, from design through to maintenance. Any non-technical project managers were routinely beaten into submission by technical management. Took me ages to get over the shock. But these companies were notorious in the industry for being able to deliver more, faster, better and cheaper than their bloated, suit-driven rivals.
For any developer going through interviews, I advise you to ask for some time with one or more project managers, get into technical conversation and see what they know. If they start bullshitting and bluffing - decline the job politely and look forward to the interview with the next company.
Otherwise, your career may suffer unrecoverable damage. Every month you spend in the industry - you are accountable for that time, and hsve to justify it when seeking your next job. Don't be seduced by slightly higher pay packets with the suit-driven outfits - it'll cost you in the long run.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
I think the biggest challenge you face is changing the corporate culture. I was in a similiar situation a while back and moved into project management. And, you know, it just didn't matter much because the requests for the impossible still kept coming from above. The only difference was that I was responsible for delivering them. A company needs to have a culture of being realistic and that has to come from the top. Without that, I think it's unlikely you're going to change much in that respect.
On the other hand, the one thing you can change by becoming a project manager is making the lives of the people under you better. You can deflect the blame a bit more and give people the breaks and recognition they deserve. And that is certainly worth something.
Devon
Has anyone else found the barrier to project management is their technical knowledge?
:-) I really WANT to code or design, but status meetings and budget reviews keep getting in the way. Sigh.
I might counter that you have this backwards. As a long-time project manager with a technical background, my feeling is that the barrier to technical knowledge is project management.
In all seriousness, though, work with your current project manager. If they are not technical, then they are glossing over things because they don't understand the importance. Testing is a wee bit critical, and unless they are pulling delivery dates completely out of their backsides with no input from you it is partially your fault for the schedules being pushed so hard. Your job is, quite frankly, to manage your project manager. "Manage up". Tell him/her how things are going, exactly, and make delivery scedules completely clear. DO NOT HIDE ANYTHING! The secret to a good relationship with a project manager is information flow. The more s/he knows about exactly what is going on, the more likely you are to be in agreement with schedules. Your PM is getting pressure from upper management to delivery products on time and under budget, and unless s/he knows about schedule slips way ahead of time, or problems with the design, etc, the less time s/he will have to prepare the executives for a change. You are not working in a vaccuum! Your PM is your best (and often ONLY) advocate to the executives, and you need to make them work for you. Believe it or not, I prefer it when I know all the good AND bad things going on so I can protect my team from unreasonable pressure from above and get them the resources they need to finish the work. If I don't know, I can't prepare the groundwork.
If you want to move into project management, take on more and more of the role yourself. Gather status reports ahead of time and consolidate them into a summary for your PM. Ask to assist in budget preparations or schedule creation. Make it clear that you are there to help, not to hinder, and make it clear that you want to move into that role. Show the merit of a technical person acting in a PM capacity.
Good luck. And think seriously about it - if you love technical work, you might want to consider staying there, as PM work is NOT technical and you might feel that you have made a big mistake at some point.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel. -
Programming skills and management skills are mutually-exclusive. I've always found project managers to be hired as programmers who were later found to be lousy programmers. I remember working with one guy who was hired because of a great resume. His first words when he came in the door were "I'm really not technical". He became a project manager because, although he wasn't technical, he gave great face.
A project manager is basically a eunuch acting as a catcher in a shitball game.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
He was a developer in a former life, so he understands what I have to do to get the job done and supports me 100%. Hell, he's kept the heat off of me when a project went over the time frame.
/. is how to interview a technical manager.
As your boss this question:
Would they rather have the correct answer in a day or the wrong answer right now? Of course they want the correct answer, and that's how you then sell them on getting a technical manager. Tell them that while you test as best as you can, you are focusing on the wrong issues which could allow for bugs which will lead to problems and wrong answers. Of course your next question to
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I understand your frustration that you see things going badly and want to do a better job, but knowing the details of developers' work is not the answer.
The best project manager I ever worked with knew nothing about the details. It was in the early days of the Web, building a very complex Web site for a client, and he barely knew how to write HTML. But here's why he was a great PM: He trusted his team, including the technical lead, he understood the people and knew how to get them to work well together, and he knew the importance of high level issues like testing, clear specifications and change control. He was a good *manager*.
And here's another key to success: strong sales people. Good sales people will get the right cost estimates from the developers/consultants, and then won't buckle under pressure when they present those to the client. Then you actually have time to do the testing which was factored into the proposal.
I was a very technical project manager, not quite a developer, but I like to think I understood the tech details very well and got on well with my various teams. But I would regularly get bogged down in the details simply because I enjoyed them, and as a result would spend less time on the strategic issues like persuading the client that they should reconsider their latest idea. I think I did well, but I know I could have done better.
My advice to you is this: talk to your project managers and sales people, and get them to understand the importance of the various stages of work. Show them that a slip early on can lead to more costly slips later. Advise them, and get them to trust you, so that when you say "We need to spend two weeks testing" they make sure you get that two weeks and don't think "Oh, but I'm sure we can get away with a couple of days".
As for progress in your career, project management is a lot about people and little about knowing obscure technical details. If it's people you want to focus on, then great. Otherwise perhaps you should aim for being a senior architect. And then your company can charge more for your time, and they'll have even more budget to spend on testing!
In my experience project managers like to have a technical team member whom they can trust. A sparring partner (might as well stick with PM lingo) who can be trusted to see beyond the technical side of the project and understands the importance of budgets, client needs and so on. Project managers are like most professionals; they don't necessarily want an easy job, but they want to be succesful.
Don't reject your PMs bollocksy timelines out of hand, but work with him to show what the result of following that timeline would bring. If your PM thinks to skip testing of the product, it's best not to act like the haughty technical prima donna who refuses to release anything untested. Instead, talk about risks and alternatives. If you know of any past famous projects that failed for poor planning, show him what he is getting into.
Do this well, and PMs will start to know you for someone who helps them rather than someone who'll dig his heels in. Perhaps at some point you'll be asked to be technical manager for alarger project. That's the perfect job for those who are thinking about a management position but not ready to give up on technology.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I used to work for a IT company with a creative vent, as a result they hired project managers with ZERO understanding of the tech side, and knew more about making things purty.
We got by because the project managers knew that they didn't know anything, so they would ask about everything, but that did put a major strain on the tech department as we ended up being consulted about EVERYTHING.
I am a strong believer that project managers should understand the area that the project is in, they don't have to be a guru but it makes sense that they should at least understand whats going on.
However I also know that a project manager needs to understand more than 'joe programmer', as business(tm) (as in harvard business school) comes more into there jobs. And of corse they should be able to buffer the programmers from the clients, I know a lot of hackers who cannot comunicate with each other, let alone a suit.
c.
> I may meet resistance from the current project
> managers - many of them have been hired with no
> previous experience of anything.
Really? Wow, you work in an organization where they hire managers without experience, but they also hire quality programmers? Hum, sounds fishy.
> Previous suggestions to senior management
> that myself and other developers would feel
> better with a technical person running projects
> have been dismissed.
As someone who hasn't actually managed a project, you're in no position to assess the situation.
Clearly you can't see or understand your colleauges' contributions or experience. Therefore, you are likely in no position to be a project manager.
You get to be a project manager by proving yourself, not by telling your management that you're better than others.
> Has anyone else found the barrier to project
> management is their technical knowledge.
> How did you get past it?
No, the barrier is being an egotistical programmers who thinks that they're better than non-technical people. That's the real barrier.
I'm technical. But I appreciate quality management, and I understand that they have critical value to the projects we pursue.
I think that's a start. But I also think you're many years away from being a good project manager. Given your attitude, I'd hate to work with you.
The main reason highly technical people do not get PM jobs, or any high management job for that matter, is becuase people generally do not speak in binary.
If you can not sell an idea or explain a problem to business management, they are not going to hire you to lead up there technical crew. How would they then understand what the group is doing? EVEN if the PM is a ditz, they at least THINK that they have a handle on the situation. Most technical people I know have people skills that end with video conferencing with their "clan" of Magic players.
Image is everything in upper management.
Sounds to me, from your description, that your company has a bad attitude towards software development. If they're not willing to listen to the developers (and again, from your description, it sounds like this goes above just the project managers), then it's going to be really tough to change the tide.
I've worked in places where non-technical people were the project managers, and invariably, they were bad project managers. I'm not saying there aren't good ones out there that aren't technical. I just haven't met any of them.
Not all developers make good project managers, by the same token. I found I wasn't particularly good at it. I'm just not organized enough, and personally, I prefer the development aspect. The one advantage I did have though, was that I listened to the developers, and I understood the issues. I knew what was possible and what wasn't. I knew when developers were being realistic and when they were unrealistic, same for management. Fortunately, I was able to bridge the gap between upper management and the developers pretty well, and I was able to manage the expectations of upper management.
If your current company is unwilling to bridge that gap, then your situation is probably hopeless, and you may be better served at a company that knows how to develop software properly.
Has anyone else found the barrier to project management is their technical knowledge. How did you get past it?
Absolutely not. Although I have suffered the problems you mention.
I have found that these are more often due to poor communication between PM and coder. It's the PM's job to direct the project to a successful completion while keeping an eye on resource allocation. It is the techie's job *clearly* explain the technical restrictions and options.
If you are relying on one team member to have *all* the necessary skills, then you do not have a real "team".
I am a Karma Library.
Whether its IT, Municipal drafting Electrical or whatever, Engineers (regardless of how long they have "managed" projects) are NOT Project Managers. You frustrate the hell out of me. I've been a Professional Project Manager for years and an Amateur computer geek. The thing that always stuck in my craw is the assumption that just because a person knows an Engineering Discipline that they automatically know how to manage projects. Project Management is a complex discipline and to manage projects well takes a solid educational background in that arena. It is a skill set unto itself. Document Controls, managing Gaant charts and schedules and (especially) managing the "people" end of things takes a great deal of effort to excel at. But NOOOOOO, Engineers always assume that because they can conceive a project, they MUST be able to manage it, and it always ends up as a grand jitterbug called, "Crisis Management". Now, don't get me wrong. Its not like I hate engineers. Many of my friends are engineers. I have spent most of my life working in and around engineers. Engineers are not Project Managers. Project Managers are Project Managers Engineers have to concern themselves with managing details. Project Managers have to manage the "big picture". In the end, if a correct perspective was given to the Project Management Profession was given more respect (or even an open minded consideration) a LOT more projects would complete more successfully.
Pick up a copy of Kent Becks' book Extreme Programming Explained: embrace change.
Where I work, we are in the same situation, both our project managers and sometimes our staff managers have no technical experience.
I can tell you that technical folk managing projects doesn't work. What this did to us is cause the project managers to do very little, other than sit around and mandadate scope and delivery dates to the technical lead, who has to then force their developers to produce crappy software.
So, while I don't have a solution, the XP book at least give me hope that there is a better way...
I miss my PM. Her job was basically:
When prototypes for the project were running late, I didn't have to spend endless hours chasing people down and tracking the issues delaying them. My PM did that.
When the project had slipped 6 weeks, I wasn't the one on the calls getting yelled at and yelling back about the fact that more than 50% of the TYPES of prototypes we needed hadn't even been delivered yet. My PM did that. I was down in the lab working.
When I had to attend technical calls ( like bug scrubs ) I didn't have to go dig up the bugs being covered so I could review them for the meeting. My PM always met with us 30 minutes prior and went over the list so that we could get things clearly in mind going into the call.
And when the shit hit the fan, and we were death marching till 2am for weeks on end, my PM was there making sure we got fed ( on the company dime ), and staying late to make sure we did eventually go home and sleep.
None of this really requires much technical skill on the part of the PM. All it requires is a respect for the team and an understanding that the most effective way to get your project in on time is to support the team. By the middle of the project we ( the technical guys ) where willing to kill ourselves to meet the project objectives for this PM.
As someone with both extensive technical background and solid leadership and project management skills I can state for a fact that my ability to successfully envision, flesh out (e.g. requirements and design documents), estimate and plan (e.g. develop project schedules and resource estimates which I then translate into MS-project) a project or development effort is inextricably linked to my understanding of that project and its technical underpinnings.
Over the course of my career I have dealt with legions of formal "project managers", (folks who are pure project managers lacking any technical background) and I have yet to realize any value in my interactions with any of them, beyond the occasional willingness to record meeting minutes.
To date I have found them to be glorified secretaries, whose primary tactic is to latch on to knowledgeable people and not only drain information but actually get them to perform the real tasks of project management, such as scheduling and resource estimation.
In addition, many of these folks like to act as middlemen, brokering information and jealously hiding their sources so people must go to them for information. This would not be a terrible thing if they actually understand the project and had the knowledge required to effectively answer questions and communicate the status of the project accurately but that is very rarely (never in my experience) the case.
In my own experience, I have had a number of project managers assigned to various efforts I was responsible for, ostensibly so I could focus purely on the development effort and on technical leadership. In every case I have spent months working with a non technical project manager, spending 3-4 hrs a day with this person reviewing (creating) the project plan and having to spoon feed information to them (essentially so they could answer questions in meetings) as well making detailed suggestions about how they could overcome some obstacle external to our group that was needed in order for the project to succeed. In the mean time while this significant chunk of my time is being invested into sharpening my puppeteering skills the formal project manager has been horrible miscommunication project requirements and status to other groups.
So in short order these folks are out and I'm back attending meetings and working with external groups as well internal.
The primary factor behind the ineffectiveness of these folks is there complete lack of technical background. Successful project management is not just about writing up project plans and throwing dates and times down, its about understand the underlying objectives, as well as the pitfalls and obstacles in the way of those objectives. It's about understanding the project goals thoroughly enough to be able to determine what tasks are required to accomplish the project and making resource estimates that are realistic and effective.
This understanding and affinity for the project is something formal project managers very rarely have.
Before you apply for project manager, read up on project management. To me, it sounds like the entire company is fundamentally flawed, and becoming more senior will only worsen your day-to-day life. This book will help you figure out if there's hope. Carefully assess the situation before you make a dangerous leap.
Stop the brainwash
I have found that an excellent way to get project owners more involved with doing things the right way is to use Extreme Programming
1) write the tests first (i.e. define the interfaces for the code that is going to be implemented first ... this focuses you to think about design up front)
2) short iterations - keeps the project in synch with the owners expectations. If an itteration is 2 weeks (my usual cycle), then the owner is always on top of whats going on
3) continuous integration - everyone must checkin as soon as they've written the code the completes their current task (tasks should never be longer than a day or two). So, if something breaks at most you've only got a day of code to go through and find out where the bug is. And, since you're writing the tests first (i.e. JUnit or its clones http://www.xprogramming.com/software.htm)
4) Simple design. Never add code that you don't need right now, because you think it will make adding a future feature easier. Often requirements change. The best case is you guess right and you've already done the work by the time you get to that feature. However, if you're even slightly wrong about the feature, then you'll have to rework it anyways, so don't do it ... ever.
All of these play together to make the boss or project manager more involved (not what you wanted to hear), but in return you usually get more control (including testing) because the tests are actually part of the design process and have to be written before any code is.
Good Luck!
---
"Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that."
Haven't you seen the TV commercials man!?!
Fred, what's the matter? We're only asking the impossible.
CDW's television commercials suggest that they can solve these impossible problems and make everything in your organization work like it should!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/en
bp
I started going to the local comm college to pursue a programming degree. This knowledge is extremely helpful. I have also read tons of case studies on projects to gain PM experience that way.
In all I am becoming an effective PM with decent tech knowledge. Even if you only take a few programming classes it is very valuable. Other skills to pick up are:
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Have a read on that and some other articles in the archive. I am sure you it will help you put your thoughts in some order. You can then give it a try (diplomatic one) and move the waters a bit.
Just my $0.01
Marcos
This is pure trash. The fact is that most programmers don't and don't really care to understand much about the business. That's exactly the reason that you need technical leads or TPMs who understand both the business requirements and enough of technology to make reasonable trade-off decisions, and either work closely with a business-oriented PM/requirements person, or have excellent rapport with upper-management (i.e. have their trust - not be perceived as a lying technology person).
'm a senior project manager in a medium sized company where the programmers have no business experience of any sort. I'm of the opinion that programmers should understand the business that they're part of and want to move into programming myself. I'm aware that I may meet resistance from the current programmers - many of them have been hired with no previous experience of anything. Previous suggestions to senior management that myself and other project managers would feel better with business person programming on projects have been dismissed. As a result we are routinely told to push out deadlines or that our requirements are impossible, with an emphasis on how technically aesthetic things are rather than how well things meet the business requirements. Has anyone else found the barrier to programming is their business knowledge. How did you get past it?"
Been there, done that. Depending on the political climate, you have have screwed yourself because you spoke out. Done that too. :(
In my case the following occured when I realized we were lead by the unititiated, and for YEARS tried to make change:
Essentially, by speaking my mind, and giving my opinion what which way the IT area should be headed, I got labeled Anti-Microsoft (when in reality, the guy in charge would want anything MS even if it didn't really fit the need. An NBM-er.) What they really wanted was lackeys. I left within 6 months of receiving a 'Dedication to Excellence' (or something) award.
My suggestion is to write down all the positives and negatives of your current boss, and if you were boss. If it seems to make sense, and management's decisions fly in the face of logic, just leave.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
IT sounds to me that you project managers are behaving like non-technical clients, so treat them that way.
Guide them through the development process, get well defined requirements.
manage there expectations.
Get proper business logic out of them
So,
'I want a button that save the file in x format'
becomes,
'I must be able to save the file in x format' and
'There should be a UI component to do it'
Then get a decent definition of the format, work through any problems with them and any possible future requirements, Set up some testing requirements. Why do they need to save the file.
Once this is done, decide where in the UI the save file should be available from.
It is your responsibility to ensure that the project managers do a good job. Send them back to the clients if there's something missing, set up decent procedures, make sure testing is defined with the requirements so that it doesn't get skipped, and most importantly make sure things are set out in a clear fashion that everyone understands, with out scope for ambiguity.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
My advice would be to work on your resume.
The biggest worry I'd have at a job like that is the incorrect evaluation of my procifiency and progress based on inaccurate or incorrect standards. I don't want to be fired/promoted because of how my apps look, I'd want to be recognized for building solid, stable, functional apps.
In this situation, you're being judged on purely arbitrary parameters that have little relation to what technology's true business goals should be.
Another disconcerting problem with this scenario is the likelyhood that they would promote from within to management is rather low, if they do not value technical expertise. You can't expect to make it into a managerial tech position from within further down the road if tech expertise isn't one of the primary prerequisites for attaining that position.
I'd move on as soon as a bigger and brighter opportunity presented itself if I didn't have a TRUE tech manager.
Most technological companies these days have project managers that are in fact from a technical background. One of my goals is to be one such project manager possibly, and so I'm taking my computer engineering undergraduate degree off to graduate school so that I can get a masters in business administration. Companies that wish to be successful will hire people with similar backgrounds, whether it be from work experience or education. I don't know what to do about your company, but I know hiring engineering managers who've never attended a math course over the 200 level is bad, bad policy.
~ now you know
Any developer striving for a PM type job needs to read a basic SDLC book, because if you think that your superior programming skills and technical knowledge alone are going to make you a wonderful PM, think again. SDLC is a very extensive and time proven process, and indeed as has been said.. developers tend to lack perspective on certain levels, and work best when given specific guidelines and dates. PM's *should* know much more about the SD life cycle, but developers have a point also... Any good system's analyst needs to have basic programming skills. The argument can go either way. However, I would choose a system's analyst with no programming skills, over a developer with no SDLC experience any day. Just my 2 cents.
It seems like this is a common theme in this industry as I am sure anyone who has been in it for a length of time will tell. I am in almost in the exact situation, as a Senior Developer answering to managers (and in many instances a VP) with a limited technical background in web technologies.
One could go further to say our managers "know enough to be dangerous", often claiming they are "technically minded" and feel they inherit the skills of the team they manage, often changing specifications or routinely trying to influence technical decisions.
So what do you do? Here is a bit of what we have done to make things better:
Understand that you have been hired to do a job because you are qualified to perform the task. I don't want to sound like a motivational speaker, but you need to be confident in the ability to do your job as an expert. Any influences you try and make to a superior will not be taken seriously if you don't take yourself seriously. And don't be afraid to say "Let me do my job. I am the expert here."
Next, do the research. Don't walk in and say something like "We need to test our code." That is a given (or should be). Walk into an office with a formalized test procedure printed out in your hand and say "We need to do THIS." Also, try and site specific project management guidelines they are not following. Speak their speak. If you want to argue that a PM is not doing their job, make sure you know what that job is and how they are not performing it.
That having been said, if all else fails I will quote one of my colleagues: "Be a cock." If you are trying to influence a project manager in accepting what is an industry standard practice, be it formalized requirements definitions, change request processes, staging areas, federated databases or whatever, sometimes you need to "step up" and push the changes through. But remember there is a difference between being a cock and being an asshole. You don't have to be afraid to argue (or fight) with your boss for the betterment of the project, just make sure you can back up your point. "Why are you fighting me on this when the entire industry acknowledges this at the best practice?"
Donno if this helps. Hopefully it does.
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative." -- Woody Allen
Let me tell you straight off: Your problem is not restricted to software development only. I work in mechanical engineering and it is largely the same.
What works for me is to always ask for a solid project plan. If all's well, if there is a project budget, there MUST be a project plan somewhere. If there is not, find another place to work! The project plan is your best friend if you want to keep your PM in line.
A good project plan contains at least:
- Outline of the project goals
- Project boundaries (what you will NOT be doing)
- A project planning with a work breakdown
- Milestones with deliverables and delivery dates
- Known risks in the project
- Backup plans to eliminate the risks
- A cost estimation
To use the project plan in your favor do the following (in writing!):
- For every task that does not seem to fit the goals of the project, ask your PM to explain how this contributes
- For every task that seems to go beyond the projects' boundaries, ask your PM to explain why this is necessary.
- For every activity for which the planning seems inadequate or unrealistic, ask your PM the following questions: HOW did he estimate a planning for this activity? Did he actually TALK to the people who must perform this activity? If not, on WHAT did he base his planning? Ask him to replan AFTER talking to the people performing the activities.
- If you see risks to the project that were not mentioned in the project plan (like not testing and such), mention them (of course with a reasonable explanation) and ask your PM to explicitly mention them in the project plan.
- Of course, ask him to think of a backup plan for these risks (or deliver it to him yourself).
Ok, the trick to effectively tighten the leash on your PM is to warn him on paper and then, if he doesn't respond harrass him with your remarks during the review meetings of every milestone! If you have valid points, it will reflect badly on him with the management being there and it will teach him to listen to his techies.
It may take time and you may need to do this often, but I must still encounter a situation where this doesn't work if you are pigheaded enough.
Hope this helps,
Delgul
Whenever you have a meeting with your PM, have a in one form or another a list of the current project requirements at hand. Whenever he asks for a new feature you show him the list and say something like: "Ok, here we have our current requirements. Which one would you like to put back in favour of the new feature" (politely). From practice I can tell you that this works wonders ...
I'm an engineer and recently had the dubious honor of managing a system implementation and integration project. It wasn't a completely positive experience though it did have its rewards.
My biggest warning to you is to not expect the impossible deadlines and ridiculous requests to magically disappear. You'll just be the one passing them on to the engineers. The only difference will be that they'll know that you know how ridiculous they are.
--john
If you just hook the website up so it emails you and your boss whenever someone hits a glitch (database error, whatever) on your website, you'll get a lot more support for adequate testing. I did this inadvertently at one point and believe me, it gets a lot of attention but my bosses definitely appreciate testing more.
They'll come demanding an explanation and you tell em that to prevent that in the future, it is a common rule of thumb at Microsoft (and they're the best in the industry from your bosses' perspective, right?) that they spend at least one person testing for every person programming. So half the time developing is debugging. (i.e. its not just your incompetence... even the smart people do loads of testing.) Then step back and let management decide what to do.
If they're stupid at that point, do you really want to be there?
That said, fixing every bug no matter how big or small is a luxury your company may not have. Stay levelheaded yourself.
--LP
The IEEE Computer Society publishes "The Software Project Manager's Handbook", by Dwayne Phillips, available at http://www.computer.org/cspress/CATALOG/bp08300.ht m. It's essentially a cookbook on how to run a software project that not only explains in non-academic terms what should be done, but how and why it should be done. It's an excellent guide for developers who want to break into management and for helping inexperienced PMs to not mess things up. We've been using it on the task I manage and life is a lot easier for all of us. I recommend it to everyone in our field.
Taking a course like this would put you ahead of those that have neither the project management background or skills and those with a tech background who want to move into project management but don't have a background in it.
The company I work for doesn't have a project manager. We have this guy who calls himself one though -- but he doesn't manage anything but his own department, our content production team.
Our 'managers' -- two twentysomethings who worked at a financial company for a year, so they think they know how to do things professionally -- are the ones that demand the impossible. Or micromanage tech-side solutions so they are inefficient. Or simple don't spec things out, and then add requirements on the last day before a deadline.
My opinion is that a good project manager, tech knowledge or no, would keep this kind of stuff in check. He or she would have a clear idea of what's really necessary for our product to get off the ground, and listen to the right people. Technical knowledge might help. It might help a lot. But not as much as common sense. And not as much as a clear idea of what the project really needs.
It sounds like you've been dealing with BAD project managers. The tech stuff might be hurting them, but it's definitely possible to be a decent manager without tech knowledge. Just harder.
I am one of those "non-technical" project managers you refer to, and I can assure you that your company is a rare breed: one that does not put a "subject matter expert" at the head of project implementations.
However, you should know that the role of a project manager does not mean that he/she should be able to personally implement any of the tasks that need to get done. The PM is, above all, an administrator. The PM's responsibility is to formulate the project plan (with the project team's input), monitor the execution of the tasks, control issues/risks/changes/etc., and manage the hand-off of the project deliverables into the business' day-to-day operations.
Yes, the PM cannot communicate effectively with his/her team unless he/she has at least a clue as to the jobs that each member does. But seriously, a clue is really all the PM needs! Managing a project effectively does not mean being able to step in to give assistance if a project is short-staffed or the deadline is moved up. It means that the PM will *manage* (facilitate more resources if possible, make sure that the project's problems are reported appropriately if not). Ideally, a PM is MORE effective if he/she is not actually doing any of the tasks to completing the project: such tasks tend to be distracting to the (supposedly) primary job of project management. If the project is small, then (again, ideally) the PM should manage more than one project.
It doesn't sound like the PMs in your company are very effective, but that has nothing to do with being non-techies. ANY PM that dictates unrealistic deliverables or deadlines without buy-in from his/her team is a poor PM, regardless of technical know-how.
You also say that you want to be a project manager. Are you willing to let go of your desire to jump into the weeds when you see problems? Because if you don't, I can assure you that other things are going to slip your notice. And what if you are the "superman" who can be cheif-of-all-things on a project? I would be nervous if I was your company's management and your project is critical. If you were to leave the company (for any reason, including an accident), there would be an impossible hole to fill.
A GOOD project manager can effectively manage just about any project, as long as he/she has a clue. This is not to say that you are not a good PM: I'm just saying that project management and technical know-how are mutually exclusive skills.
Darren Best, PMP
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
The company I work for has developed what is, in my ~12 years of experience as a software engineer, the best project leadership approach I've seen. I can't give you any recommendations on how to get your management to try something like this, but I still think you'll find it interesting.
The fundamental notion underlying the approach is that good project managers and good technical people are somewhat different, and that projects go smoothest when everyone does what they're good at. Another key part of the philosophy is that neither type of person is more important to the success of the project than the other. Ya gotta have both, and they both have to be good.
So, for every project we have a Project Leadership Team, consisting of a Project Manager, a Technical Architect (funny term, but needed to distinguish from the next guy) and a User Interface Architect (the UI Architect is optional on small projects). These three individuals are *peers*, and all major project decisions are made by concensus.
Each person has a well-defined area of responsibility, and decisions which lie strictly within that area are only made by that person, although important decisions should be shared with the team. The team also succeeds or fails as a team; praise and blame will be apportioned equally.
The PM is responsible for building and maintaining the project plan, tracking progress, communicating with higher management and the client (we're a consulting organization) and generally for ensuring an on-time, on-budget delivery. The PM has to know how to deal with all of the business issues and has to be an excellent communicator. Some technical background is useful, but not strictly necessary.
The Techincal Architect is responsible for managing the daily technical tasks of the technical personnel (all other personnel management tasks devolve to the PM), as well as having overall responsibility for the technical work. The TA sets the technical vision, development standards and guidelines and generally ensures the technical quality of the result. This person must be a very capable designer and programmer and good at communicating with technical people. It helps if (s)he can communicate effectively with non-technical people as well.
The UI Architect is responsible for gathering requirements, defining the UI (often via a series of prototypes, and occasionally with the help of human factors consultants), managing the UI developers and QA team and generally ensuring the result solves the client's problem. This person must be a very capable UI designer and programmer and must be able to communicate well with both technical and businesspeople. In the case of my company, there are a number of very senior UI architects who have PhDs in cognitive and industrial psychology as well as being excellent programmers with deep knowledge of a wide variety of UI toolkits. These guys are seriously hard to find but amazingly helpful.
To put it in a nutshell: The TA makes sure the project gets built right, the UIA makes sure the right project gets built and the PM makes sure the project gets built.
The team members quickly realize that their areas of responsibility frequently come into conflict and that compromises are necesary. Sometimes they realize that the project as planned is impossible; if all three are on top of things then this realization comes early, allowing higher management an opportunity to find or negotiate a solution with the client.
This team structure is not only very effective, it tends to engender a healthy respect between the leadership team members, since each gets a chance to see into the others' worlds. Actually, each is *required* to see into the others' worlds, since that's the only way to resolve the issues that come up.
On small projects, there is no separate UI team and the UI Architect's responsibilities can be divided between the PM and the TA (who then becomes the "A"). On very large projects, each of the three leaders will have a small staff of assistants and in many cases the project will be broken into subprojects that each have their own leadership team, with a senior leadership team taking overall responsibility.
An interesting insight that was pointed out to me a few years back is that this leadership team approach is an application of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) structure to project leadership. This and other concepts allow my company to maintain an exceptionally good track record of on-time, on-budget deliveries (don't know the exact number, but well in excess of 90%).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The formal project management session at CHECK (sorry, the sessions aren't online yet) did outline the structure for the people involved in a project. The thing I remember most is that the structure that was presented to us (and endorsed by the State) had Project Managers in an organizational role *only*. They didn't make technical decisions. They drove home the process of managing a project. They generated reports for the suits, kept everyone on track with timelines (decided on by the group), documented the process, ran project meetings, and kept things neat and orderly. They didn't make technical decisions. The presentation giver did say that it would be ideal if the Project Manager was someone of a technically minded person so they could write documentation correctly, not give out false information, and would simply understand to a certain degree what all the technical people were saying. That doesn't mean they have to understand the ins and outs of BGP but they should be able to understand enough of what it is after an explanation to get the point across in writing.
IIRC I also heard one of the other (larger) Unvs say that they are considering highering a full-time Project Manager for their dept. Project management can easily become a full-time job.
Hopefully your state endorses some sort of PMM. I would try to convince the suits to let your team leaders take a class or two. If nothing else it will help the actual Project Manager out if the majority of the people that person works with understands the PMM process.
If you look at project management then you see three sides of the "coin".
.... except if the manager was an "old fox" in programming and experianced in architectures AND had enough energy and patience to LEAD youngsters and enough bones to do not step back if upper management wanted BS from the team.
a) The client relation.
b) The technical challange.
c) The administration of man power, tasks and budgets.
Regardless how good you manage the technical challange, that means how good you "drive the software process", the other two aspects are equal important for success.
The a) is a typical responsibility for a typical project manager. Discussing with the customer to get inputs what to do and make agreements about when to deliever.
With c) the project manager basicly tries to accomplish the in a) agreed goals and time lines.
Without in depth knowledge how a technical project is to be managed, that means how software is crafted or should be crafted this is impossible.
The only way to lead a software project with out software skills (mainly architecture and software project management, like: milestone planning, release planning, quality assurance, version and configuration control) is to have a very good communication skill and very communicative lead developers.
If the project manager TRUSTS the estimations of the lead developers and TRUSTS their explanations why certain taks have to be done in a certain order, he still can manage with out to deep technical knowledge.
In reality a team is rarely build up with high skilled and high communicative people at once.
So the only true solution is to evolve form a programmer to an architect and from an architect into a project managing role.
I was for a long time, as long as I had no project scheduling skills, of the opinion that a technical product/technical project can only be managed by in depth knowledge of the involved technologies. Meanwhile I think it works without also, as explained above. But still I did not found a project witch was managed perfectly
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It would be very difficult for a non-technical person to be a project manager. How would they, then, mediate technical disputes between technical people? Often, during the course of a project, people come to technical logger heads. Often, the only way to resolve this is by the project manager facilitating a solution. I've done is hundreds of times over the last 10 years.
A lot of project management is mundane stuff (tracking schedules, informing people of changes, etc), but a lot of it is making informed decisions about what to do. By this, I mean, there are always bumps in the road to getting out any product. If there isn't one person smoothing over the bumps, then the design will drift.
Aside from the obviousness of the subject line, project managers should be, first and foremost, GOOD managers - in all that entails. That being said, a good manager listens to the experts on his/her team and judicously balances that with the needs of the company. Too many PM's allow themselves to be bullied by one side or the other. Sr. mgmt bullies them into the low-cost (on the front end) solutions; while the tech experts bully them into the best technology they know exists (by saying things like 'we can do it the other way, but my way is the RIGHT way to do it.'). That may not always be an accurate statement.
:-)
My point is that both sr. mgmt and the tech experts have a stake in their point of view. It is the PMs job to make sure the needs of the company are met - fiscally and technologically. There are always trade-offs between expediency and and technology. That is why PMs have to focus the project. How long does this solution need to work? 3 years? 5 years? What is the true budget for this project? Can I spend a bit more on testing? Do those end users really need those screens re-done or are they fine the way they are? Is it reasonable for sr. mgmt to expect this solution will provide X,Y, and Z when we agreed it would only do A,B, and C?
These are just basic examples, of course. So, to stay officially on-topic, it is important that the PM understand/empathize with the programmers' and designers' work, but not that he/she be an expert in those areas. A PM should be comfortable with all aspects of the project - programming, design, test, build, finance, IT infrastructure, etc. A jack of all trades but master only in diplomacy and management.
On the flip side, a PM who has a programming background may not end up being a good PM because he/she will always want a hand in the actual programming. This is a grave danger to the project because the PM has to take a strategic view of the situation and not a tactical. The PM cannot afford to be up to their proverbial elbows in programming or testing because then they tend to lose sight of man-hours or other critical elements.
Now, move PM from a mid-size or large company to a small business and all this goes out the window! There the PM is usually the one performing one of those key functions in addition to overall project responsibility.
Heh. If this analysis impresses you and you are an employer looking for a PM who thinks this way - give me a call.
-- Those of you who think you know it all are very annoying to those of us who do.
Programmers should try and have at least a basic view on business issues both inside and outside the company.
It's quite simple a question of self-defense. No mater how briliant a programmer you are, siting in your corner concentrating solely on programming you will:
- Get a lousy salary because you don't know other people's salaries or you don't know-how/have-the-courage to get a beter salary.
- Be overworked because your manager keeps piling things in your plate.
- Sudenly discovering that you got laid of or your company went bankrupt.
- Get blamed once again for a project that blew-up (and probably you won't even know about it)
Need an example?
Look no further that the pile of once "innocent and happy geeks" that sudenly found themselfs unemployed when their companies went bust with the tech-bubble colapsed (and they didn't even saw it coming)
I've been a PHP programmer working under several different project managers depending on the client for about a year now. I should mention that our art dept. does the HTML because it might be relevant later. Some key Project Managers are as follows:
A - Completely clueless. Asks the same questions over and over again. Gives the design projects (HTML) to programming and the programming projects to design. Has to repeatedly be told what a form action is. Doesn't know a database from a cheese sandwich. Often forwards us URLs that he requested asking what they are instead of clicking on them.
He's the least knowledgable of them all and the worst to work with for obvious reasons. We're constantly having to tell him what we can and can't do and constantly having to redo things because he doesn't get his point across correctly. I had to bill about 3 hours to a client to put a simple counter on 6 pages because 2 hours were explaining things to him and half an hour was redoing the counter because he gave me incorrect instructions. He's technically useless, unwilling (incapable?) to learn and also an incompetant project manager.
B - When I first started working with him he was very competant in relaying what the client wanted but wasn't as good with understanding databases and general programming stuff. After working on a major site redesign I explained how databases worked in order for him to provide me with CSV which I could correctly import. It was important he knew the reasons because he had to explain them to the client. I explained a lot of what can and can't be done and by the end of the project he was entering data himself saving me hours of work.
This guy is a pleasure to work with. He knows enough to be helpful but not enough to be dangerous. He'll ask us how long something takes to do and will accept our answer without questioning it. He'll give us plenty of notice when things are due and listen to our suggestions about due dates. He doesn't always know if something is possible or impossible, but he'll believe us when we tell him we can't do it.
C - This guy claims he used to be a programmer. He's new, so I have less experience working with him. I just started a new site with him and because he claims to know programming and design he wants to play a big part in all 3 roles. He knows enough to be dangerous and is always asking "why?" and wanting to see my database table structure.
This guy is a pain in the ass to work with. He seems to know what's possible and impossible, which is important, but unfortunately he doesn't take suggestions because "he's a programmer". He knows enough to be dangerous and his curiosity is time consuming.
After working with these project managers for a while, this is the conclusion that I've come up with.
Clueless morons will always be clueless morons.
Just because someone knows programming, doesn't mean they'll be a good project manager. It depends on the person, of course, but this could actually be a detriment if they insist on sticking their noses into things too much.
A project manager that you can teach and mold seems to be the most important. If they're competant and willing to learn they'll be the biggest asset. They don't need to understand for loops, but if they listen to you and trust you then you'll do well. The 5 minutes that it takes to quote them a time estimate is not a big deal. The hour it takes to explain to them why that's the case is a big deal.
Most importantly in my job is the fact that the project managers have to listen us and when they do question us our boss will resolve the situation.
You're on to something, for sure.
The problem the OP describes usually comes down to a lack of communication between the people doing the work and the people ordering it. Building up trust is a great way to get people to listen to you.
This is also why the various agile methods (XP, Scrum) work well; short-cycle iterative processes force a lot of interaction, and frequent deliveries build confidence on both sides. Allowing features to be reprioritized every iteration gives managers the feeling that they're in full control, which makes them much less likely to demand impossible things.
But I have seen cases where this won't work. In an organization of sufficient size, the high-ups are so isolated from reality that they can only manage by appearances; the people under them can succeed just by creating the appearance of success. All programmers know that it's easy to create the appearance of success for v1.0 while leaving a steaming pile of turds under the hood that will sabotage any attempts at v1.5. Truly evil managers will take this every time and then move on to a higher position, leaving somebody else holding the bag.
I toiled for a real-estate/snake-oil salesman who had made a killing in the Calofornia land rush and bought a software firm.
His total lack of perceptiveness consisted in
- handing me "The Five Minute Manager," a not-so-fine book that he'd obviously never read,
- having erraticly scheduled alleged weekly "rah rah" meeting to inspire the troops (we always met afterwards and griped that he was an idiot and the company was doomed, never mind the project,)
- asking for estimates, which I delivered based on the growing amount of work (he kept adding "fee-tchurs") to be done and the wall of the delivery date which my team and I were hurtling towards,
- and then he'd cut my small team by putting somebody on another project.
It was acidosis vs. Tums, headaches vs. Aspirins, desperation vs. alcohol medication.
I NEVER want to be a middle manager again. Specially not graftin' for an idiot. I'd rather sell shoes or groom dogs, cats and turtles (they have claws that need trimming.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
You can't really compare engineering to PM. They are two completely, vastly different things. One takes years of hard work and dedication and learning in widely disparate areas, while the other takes -- from what I can tell -- good hair, at least a passing knowledge of golf, a subscription to Details magazine, and the ability to "network" without resorting to using CAT5, fibre, or 802.11b.
Can you hire a PM with no preivous PM experience and expect products/projects to get managed? Maybe, even probably. In fact, the submitter is trying to bail water out of that particular boat so we know it not only happens, but is common. Can you hire a software engineer with no previous experience and expect any software to get written? Not even the slimmest chance in hell.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but most people could do PM if forced and very few can be programmers. So the converse of the submitter's problem doesn't even begin to hold water. "I'm a senior admin clerk in an aerospace firm where the engineers have no experience making copies and restocking the supply room..."
It just doesn't work, man.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Perhaps it's good to think about this from other perspectives. The building construction industry is a good analogy to software. The people with the money have rediculous demands. Architects and engineers design it and then the project manager has works with them to estimate its cost and time. He has to know the business side, the engineering side, and the construction side.
Construction is chock full of suprises, delays, and inconveniences just like software development. If you want to be a good software development project manager, take a look at one of those guys and see what skills they have and try to mimic that.
I'd bet they have experience in business, design, and construction, but mostly in construction.
I don't think you'll find many people fresh out of college with a business degree go into the project management business without having some practical experience with construction or design.
However, this is unfortunately the case in software development.
Aaah, well my query to the original poster was: "Have you considered that you might not actually need these new-fangled techniques?".
In your case, the answer to that question would seem to be: "yes - I have considered it and it seems that I actually do need to use those techniques".
In other words, we're both covered!
Cheers,
Ian
The teacher was a moonlighter, having a day job for the political police as a senior project manager. First of all, the class had three times the ordinary number of people, so we wasted three weeks splitting the group in three.
Then we had to work on our projects in teams of 10 people, which made managing the meetings as much work as doing the project itself.
Then I was canned, because when you're 38 years old, you just cannot learn by heart a 50 paragraph text like a 18 year old can (and then the teacher said that there was plenty of erroneous information in the text). I was canned despite our group project ending at second place when it was evaluated by the second in command of the political police...
So, if you like bullshit and nonsense stuff, go for project management.
(Reposted, account being moderated into oblivion)
Project managers must have better technical knowledge of the subject than those implementing the project. This prerequisite is critical to the project's success!
When it comes to software, folks tend to think the rules are different when compared to other technical jobs. For example, when a bridge is built, no manager would dream of giving the job to someone without a thorough understanding of physics (and more specifically, of bridge-building). But in software, folks tend to think they can hire some geek out of high school and have them implement God's universe within six days.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Software is no less complicated or serious a discipline than building bridges. If bridges fail, people can die . Likewise, if software fails, people can die just as well, and billions of dollars in damages can occur. Even if you're only implementing a text editor. (Imagine if a text editor corrupts someone's file when they're configuring a satellite computer or something. This is not a joke.) And infinitely more so if you're implementing an operating system, for crying out loud.
Contrary to popular misperceptions, software is a serious matter, not some colorful graphics and icons you click on. To manage a software project, you can't just understand project management. You have to understand what happens when both bits of a XOR gate are high, and you must understand this better than the programmers you manage! Even if they program in Visual Basic. To be a good project manager, who can give reasonable estimates (not just to shut up management, but to tell the honest truth about when something can be implemented with reasonable quality), who can deliver something that's actually worth the resources spent in development, you must be so experienced that you have forgotten 99% of what your programmers haven't yet learned, and they better be pretty damn good programmers.
For software to be truly successful in the coming years of ever-increasing dependency on computers, computer education simply must change. Programmers should become proficient in electronics as a prerequisite to any programming class. Project managers should have been programmers, and damn good ones, for 20 years prior to becoming project managers.
Wow - lots of interesting comments posted here, and some things to think about.
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that perhaps the most valuable thing about a project manager is the way they act as the "shield", protecting a group from becoming the direct pawn of an upper-level management person (CEO, VP, or what-have-you).
I can recall a situation with a previous employer where the software development dept. used to be pretty much directly controlled by the company president. Eventually, some things got restructured, and a person was assigned as a project manager over their department.
They didn't really like this, because they felt like the guy was technically clueless and just more middle-management wastefulness. (In fact, both of these things were arguably true, to an extent.) The interesting thing, though, is the department started becoming more focused on completing the development tasks that the *users* wanted, vs. only working on the "pet projects" the company president envisioned.
I've been tempted to get into project management before. (Especially after talking with a few of my buddies who came from tech. backgrounds, and now swear that project management is such a great career move for them. Better pay, more respect, etc.) Honestly, I think it requires a completely different skillset - and it's too bad so many places treat it like a "promotion" from a tech. position. IMHO, there's no reason at all to pay these guys *more* than your tech. workers.
People with good technical skills should try to continue to work where they can put those skills to the best use. Trying to become a "technical project manager" is only going to make you slowly lose your technical edge, and spend half your time doing things you don't enjoy - like building time-management charts and sitting in boring meetings.
It is not your knowledge of technical matters that is hampering you. It is your LACK of knowledge about topics that your managers value that is hindering your efforts. You obviously don't understand their philosophies and probably come across as having an agenda that is different from theirs. Management includes politics and the ability to compromise and see the other side. Work on those skills and regard your techie skills as just one arrow in your quiver and you'll be better off.
Currently hooked on AMP
You all have valid points about the issues you see, and have experienced. I guess my two cents would speak to project organization, and role definition.
System Manager/Customer: Their job is to understand what problems or opportunities they want an application or blown out system to address/fix. The groundwork is primarily laid out by the customer utilizing the talents of a business analyst during a survey/discovery phase. They are the customer, therefore they're responsible for participating in the project as much as any other group, from requirements delivery, to testing, etc.
Project Manager: They're not necessarily a manager. They're job is to serve as an interface to the customer. Get an idea of what it is the customer wants, the timeline for delivery, facilitate Joint Meetings with the customer and the technical team, track resources, and costs associated with the project, determine milestones within a project, project critical path, etc. The role of a project manager is the role of a coordinator/accountant. The project manager should serve as the communication focal between the customer, the technical team, and the management that both sides respond too. A project manager does not have to be a developer, nor should they be making any technical or design decisions of any kind within a project. That's not they're role, because keeping everyone on the same page, monitoring the product development life cycle and calling attention to scheduling and resources issues, and tracking overall project cost should keep them more than busy enough. Project manager's should also be sharp enough to recognize the requireds in a project . . . make sure agreements are made and signed on, as well as indentify product support issues, and generally understand the overall software product development life cycle, and then the support and maintenance life cycle that comes after deployment.
System Architect/Technical Lead: Their job is to run the development team, schedule all technical activities and administer the work, and provide the overall vision of the product based on requirements that came from the customer. The schedule of activities along with the estimates that have been derived by the system analysts, and developers then goes to the project manager who puts the information into the schedule and works with the the tech lead to mitigate resource constraint risks, and other cost related issues.
Think of a project team in terms of three arms of the project. System Management/Customer, Project Management, and Technical. The roles of couse can shift, but this is a sound view, and will give you a guy idea of who's supposed to be doing what. Another view is that the customer and the development team are two roads that intersect at the project management intersection.
I really don't think a project manager should have to know a thing about development as long as all three of the project arms are there. For crying out loud . . . project management is newer as a discipline than software development. Project Management came from the construction industry as a means by which the overall cost of a construction project could be lowered, by closely tracking deliverables and alerting management and the customer when deadlines weren't being met on milestones.
By the way, I'm a developer.
Management is the same as programming, at the highest level of abstraction there is. The manager's job is significantly more difficult than that of a programmer because while the programmer usually deals with quantifiable, or at least qualifiable, problems, the manager deals with ambiguous conditions all the time.
A programmer may run into an uninitialized variable for example. This is an easy fix. The manager runs into uninitialized programmers, and this is considerably more difficult to remedy.
A programmer knows the capabilities of all the objects he arranges into a piece of software, and he also knows the effciency and parameters of the algorithms that get the job done.
A manager does not have full insight into the capabilities, attitudes, and personal lives of the resources he uses to build his project. He may outline, dictate and enforce certain policies, practices and processes, but can not be assured 100% that these will not be circumvented at every turn.
So, while the programmer (such as myself) does their little thing, and when it breaks, reaches for the manual and the debugger; the manager is, at best, dealing with uncertain conditions, on a slippery slope, sans manual, with only conversation and limited metrics to serve as his debugger.
The average manager is just as qualified to manage as the average programmer is qualified to program. Any time anyone bitches and moans about how lousy and clueless their manager is, they should start fixing things by taking a good, long look in the mirror.
As a programmer, how effective an object are you? This is not meant to dehumanize - managers don't mean to treat coders as cogs, but they do have to consider that perspective. As one building block of which the project is constructed, do you provide adequate reflection for your manager to make use of your abilities intelligently? Are you doing too much information hiding? Are you a bottleneck in a good process? Are you under-utilized, or over-extended? Should you NOT be reading Slashdot from work?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
What I try to do, but for unexplained reasons is resisted, is to have management or the PM *rank* the requested features, and then knock them off one at a time.
That should tend to soften any deadline because there is no "line", per se. You have high-priority features, and lower priority features. It is rare that all of them are show-stoppers. If their is a date line, then you go with the features you have finished at that point, giving enuf time for final testing. (Some of them are integrated, so it is not always this clear-cut, but it helps.)
New requests will get added as time goes on, and the list will probably change.
However, some managers seem like they just don't want to commit to priorities. Is it because then they can't blame the developers?
Table-ized A.I.
The problem with sales people is that in their business, if the project ... err, prospect ... is "impossible", then you didn't tell a big enough lie so go back and tell a bigger lie.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Impossible is coding 100000 different values into a 16 bit field. That is where "cheap" isn't one of the choices as you have to expand the field ... and that may mean recompiling and maybe even recoding everything else that expected to use just 16 bits.
Impossibility depends on how you state the problem. If the manager says "use a 16 bit field to code the 100000 values" then it is impossible. Tell them so and they might not believe you (in part because they may have come from a background where they are drilled with concepts like "nothing is impossible if you try hard enough", even though we know that is not true). Tell them 100000 requires at least 17 bits, and that its quicker to just use 32 bits, and then at least they haven't heard the word "impossible".
If you really do have to tell them it is impossible, maybe if you relate it to something they can understand, they can get the message. "That's like running a one minute mile". "A car can do that". "A car is a 32 bit field".
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I apologize for the length but I have something to say about this topic:
.tif images and Oracle databases. Nope, they hadn't fleshed out the design before I arrived; we went from requirements gathering to design to customer sign off to finished GUI in 4 months. Yes I made it, but I almost landed in prison. The problem? A somewhat competent but HUGELY arrogant buttwipe of a PM. This guy's picture is next to the word "hubris" in the dictionary. His favorite thing was unannounced "dog & pony" shows where he would routinely berate people for not showing any progress. This PM also suffered from the trait of liking a$$sholes. His favorite boy was a devout Iranian muslim who drank heavily, fondled women, and lied lied lied. Muslim boy made one mistake though; he tried to get me in trouble with the arrogant PM. You see, muslim boy had written the coding standards document. I was standing in the room when muslim boy told the PM I was not writing code to his standard, to which I replied: "I am writing the code as close to your standard as I can, but my code interfaces with your code and your code is not written to your standard. If you would like to spend a moment I can go print out a sample of your code and we can review it in front of the PM." Muslim boy shut up after that day. But anyway, the PM was an a$$ and he always listened to Muslim boy's advice. As a footnote there was a position open a few weeks ago on dice.com at this company for an MFC Visual Studio v5.0 person who "could fix things". Hubris is a ver bad thing to have when you work in software...
.NET work in the future - and I will most likely want to come back and help out.
Well let's see, I've been doing this C++/Oracle/SQl Server thing every day for 11+ years now, sooo:
First Job: Manager was highly technical. Great gig for me because he let me play and play; I learned alot. After 4 years of bonuses and pats on the back, the job ended in a rapid 3 month assault on my work habits. For example my
"tardiness" was not an issue for 4 years - then suddenly it was a BIG issue {this from the boss who said "I don't care when you come and go I just need it done"}. Why and how did this happen? Because I refused to hand edit a report to change numbers so they were more like what the customer expected. The hand edit was needed after I discovered a nasty "off by one" bug that caused miscounts of dozens at the territor level, hundreds at the region level, and tens of thousands at the national level. My manager acknowledged the bug, told me to fix it, and then had me rerun the reports --> the reports were hugely different from the previous quarter's reports and so some "fixing" was needed to make the data more like what the customer wanted. The incidental fact that these "numbers" dictated salary and bonuses for a sales force of hundreds mattered not - the customer expected numbers that looked like the previous quarter and that's what they got. Nope, I don't think that the company that hired me out of college exists anymore...
Second Job: Two highly technical Manager(s) - they fought over me endlessly; it was fun. Why was it fun? It was fun because 1) Those guys both ran interferance - my job was to write tight code, their job was to make sure I had adequate time to do it, 2) They were TECHNICAL. Result: a very stable product that everybody liked {no really it does happen}. In general it was a Fabulous workplace with a really hot receptionist. Then the phone rang for more money...
Third Job: Maybe you've heard of them --> www.wsj.com. Yepp I helped the Wall Street Journal build their web site. Semi-technical manager whose favorite quote was "the day you see me writing code is the day we're all screwed". Okay workplace, with 2 hot babes in daily view. But there was one problem: my manager - who I did and still do like - had the horrible trait of liking incompetent a$$holes. I had a good run at Dow Jones but I have heard that my ex-manager's career has taken a nose dive --> it's hard to soar with eagles when your goto people are turkeys. The most important thing I learned at Dow Jones was that consultants make twice as much money for doing the same work as I do. Soooo, on a whim, I packed up my beamer and my babe and we moved out to CA where I would become a consultant...
Contract #1: 4 months to write a multi threaded MFC GUI that worked with
Contract #2: Signed a 6 month contract and rode the gravy train for 1.5 years before I couldn't take the stupidity anymore. Highlights of the gig were the time that the developers decided that the best database choice would be Object Store, but Marketing over rode developers and so we found ourselves writing an object-relational wrapper on top of SQL Server. The NON TECHNICAL PM didn't know the difference and we were unable to convince him that he should push back on this decision. Then there was the great "transaction controversy" where me with 8 years of databasing experience was over ruled by someone with {I'm not kidding} 3 weeks of database experience. The decision was made that MS transaction server, and transactions in general, would be too expensive and so they would not be used when transferring data across a wireless connection from a hand held to a SQL Server box. I was unable to convince the completely NON technical PM of the seriouseness of this situation. I finally couldn't take it anymore so I left. It has been 1.5+ years since I left and this product is currently installed at 1 user site and they are having "database problems"...
Contract #3: Best PM I ever worked for. The problem was that a staff of 220+ ADA programmers was making their first attempt at an OOP C++ application. The bigger problem was that project management {way high above PM level} forced an arrogant trash talkin OOP mentor onto the PM {trash talker: one who sounds great to high management but who is otherwise incompetent}. The mentor was supposed to know something about OOP and architecture. The mentor took a combat system which could have been as simple as "ship, sensor, track, doctrine, weapon" and he turned it into an unmitigated disaster of more than 8,000 classes that featured such classes as "TransitionFromStandbyToSafeNotComplete" and "ChecksumCalculator" - the latter being a class with one method --> calculateChecksum. But in every high level meeting that I attended there was my PM, who was quietly sitting in the back of the room rolling his eyes at the sh$t that was excruding from the OOP mentor's mouth. During one particularly bad sh$t storm with many high {I mean real high way above PM} level people in the room the mentor was arguing for the inclusion of another half dozen classes {with one method each} into the project. Well, I had a helluva gin hangover that morning and I wasn't in the mood for a sh$t bath and so I blurted out "yeah, yeah, yeah, and 8,000 classes later you have a system". The mentor didn't know what to do or say so he walked out of the meeting. My PM was beaming from ear to ear. Within 1 month the mentor was gone. Did I mention that my PM was both TECHNICAL and POLITICAL? Best PM I ever worked with and I will be working with him again, hopefully soon, in the future.
Contract #4: Short term biotech embedded. As I type this I am waiting for a meeting to end so that I can be tasked. I was going to play golf this summer while waiting for the economy to come back and rates to improve. But the phone rang. So I talked to these people. I'm here for 1.5 months. The work is good so far and my PM has had a large hand in writing the code - he's TECHNICAL. This contract will most likely lead to
Anyway, sorry about the length but IMHO being technical DOES matter. But the best PM I ever had was both technical and political...
--Richard
In my experience the manager has primarily been a founding partner in the business. He knows his technical stuff because he had respect enough for his developers to learn their language before asking for anything business related to be created. The ony problem has been that technology has moved faster than the managers' ability to grasp new paradigms so they often insist on methods older or less suitable for handling certain tasks. Like snapshots of a competent manager several years ago that did not grow with the times. Not only is it bad for interpersonal cohesion, but more importantly it is bad for business.
Get tech savvy managers or make it a company policy to have tech savvy managers I say. There has to be a line drawn where internal neoptism (of sorts) comes into the picture.
Inadequate knowledge is the downfall of the integrity of any service or product.
I've seen dozens of projects fail. Only projects with engineers acting as project managers have succeeded. The concept of "management specialists" is fatally flawed, and actually quite insane if you think about it for awhile. Managers have to be able to make decisions based on personal experience and domain knowledge. Traditionally, engineering project managers were very senior managers with advanced degrees. Project management was a field that you would work your way up to after several years as a junior engineer, then senior engineer, then team leader. This is another fad notion being followed with no substantiation or logic, probably as a result of the deficit of qualified project managers during the dotcom boom. It turns out that the projects probably were not all that important, however, so, in the long run (like everything else) I suppose it doesn't really matter.
But don't think you're going to get it to work.
If your org is typical, you may actually be being saddled with this "project management" in order to collect productivity metrics. In this notion engineering development is treated as a Production process rather than as a Design process. Engineering, of course, is a Design process, so to manage it you have to look at how engineering design has traditionally been managed -- what has succeeded and what has failed. Production processes are good for managing things like building a tract of houses.
When I was a kid I spent several years working as a building contractor and a project manager of building construction. For the last 20 years I have been an engineer and recently a manager of software development. They are not at all the same thing and the models should not be confused.
Just because it was an anomaly of epic proportions, here's my favorite PM's background:
She was nearing 50, had a degree in Sociology, and had been managing I/T projects for a decade or more. A lot of her projects were cobol and RPG for banks, and we were a Java house. She was remarkably good at PM. She was also seriously not technical.
Her best moments:
-- She once doubled a bid to a client based on his being unprepared and an a$$. Her explanation was life was too short and she'd rather not have to deal with him, but if he paid a vicious premium, we were there for him...
-- She liked to keep status meetings short, group-wide, and effective. Gant charts or checklists of milestone items would get a quick review, we'd respond on change in status since the previous meeting, and we were gone.
-- She knew she didn't know code. She didn't revel in it, but she would look for an effective analogy on critical issues so she could understand them well enough to do initial communications with clients (to shelter us). If it exceeded her ability, she'd arrange a call/meeting with all three of us, and she'd quietly listen and learn while we worked with the client to find a workable solution. She was willing to learn, in other words, and wasn't intimidated or put off when we would contradict or correct her on technical items.
-- She *did* know people, project management issues and methodologies, political tricks, and everything else, thanks to her adapting her sociology training over to the topic.
-- She'd rarely play us politically. If something was hot, we'd get a warning. If it was a lame issue, she'd say it was likely to fade away if ignored.
Going the other direction, I've seen technical types that were the epitome of the Peter Principle... great techies that had been handed a budget and a project without a lick of training or ability to handle the project. This scares me *more* than a non-tech PM, because they often suck at delegating, politics, shielding the techies from distractions, etc.
Having started as a design-build engineer on Semiconductor Fabs, I've got to say the software field is pretty full of rank amateurs in Project Management, in general. The people I worked with in construction PM were trained experts and had field experience and an awareness that careful design, scheduling and bidding/estimating were necessary specialties, not off-the-cuff afterthoughts, and that these were necessary costs in any large project. Anything less is like building a house without a blueprint!
I'd also argue that poor I/T Project Management training is reflected in the poor overall quality of software compared to any other engineering discipline. But that's a whole other can of worms.
Yes, that's what I meant. It's rampant in the area of industry I work in (I'm a contractor in the financial sector).
I also should have mentioned another sort of project manager...
Recognise that type too. We have some projects going on like that at the moment - huge, daft systems are built for what is essentially no more than taking a user's input from a client-app and writing it to a database. It's not even a distributed app, and yet it has been written with an n-tier approach and implemented in .Net. Hmm.
Presuming you don't want to engage in a flame war about object-oriented programming or any of the "new techniques,"
Absolutely not. No - I think your reply is a well-reasoned one with which I have no disagreement. My point, which you have understood and seem to have agreed with, was that I see sooo many projects start up with the the aim of using the latest stuff when a far simpler methodology would be more appropriate.
I'm not exactly a veteran, but I've been a professional coder for ten years now (went into contracting because I didn't enjoy the idea of becoming a manager but still wanted my pay to increase). I started of with Mac System 7 and C, have done some small amount of Windows coding, then C++, then Unix and C, C++, Java, shell scripts, Perl...anything really. Anything appropriate. Obviously along the way I've learnt new techniques - the move from C to C++ being one example (procedural to OO). I'm far from against learning new techniques. It's just that I'm only in favour of using them when they're actually needed.
Another example -- they tend to believe that refactoring is bad. With the massive, monolithic, interdependent systems of the past, "you don't touch working code" made sense.
Hmm. Still does make sense to an extent. It depends - if you are going to need to use that code again and it now needs to fit into some new framework, then yes - refactoring is good. However, if it's just going to sit there and run for the next twenty years then why rewrite? It might offend the aesthetics of decent programmers, but if it works then leave it alone.
An example. I've been handed a ton of Perl scripts to look after. They were written by someone who was learning the language as they went along and are, frankly, dreadful. The guy who wrote it accepts this too. I've rewritten various parts of this, improving as I go along, but some parts remain in the dark ages and I'm very unlikely to ever improve them. Why? No need. They work, they will never be used outside of their task (they're database feed scripts - parsing a fixed format file from a proprietary system and just dumping the results into tables), so even though they're ugly as sin I will leave them alone as they're not worth rewriting.
Yes, now this is just plain irritating. As I say, my coding armoury has been added to over the last ten years and I imagine I will need to add more over the next ten years. Things don't stand still. Everyone has their real-life example bugbears about this - my current is use of threading in client apps. Makes things -so- much more responsive from the user's point of view, but many people are scared of threads and won't allow them in.
Agree.
Cheers,
Ian
Quite a number of people have said, in effect, "Being a manager is being a manager. It has nothing to do with the process being managed." Thus, it is not a problem if software PMs know nothing about the field.
One wonders what color the sunsets are on the planet this people come from.
I've worked in several industries other than software - construction, education, medical research, nursing, and nuclear engineering. In all of them a manager had to understand what it was he or she was in charge of. They were generally senior practitioners in the field?
Why?
Because you would have to be insane to pick managers any other way.
Look at what a PM has to do. He has to make schedules and estimate costs. He has to make sure all the members of the team are working efficiently. He has to handle the unexpected, keep the customers happy, manage the supply chain so that the vendors deliver what is needed without robbing the company blind. And so on.
Unless you have a thorough understanding of the industry you are working in none of this will happen. Estimation will consist of dollar figures and dates pulled out of your butt. You won't have the confidence of the people who are working for you. A crew can deal with a boss who is a competent jerk. But they can't be effective if they know he hasn't got a clue about what he's doing.
The vendors will deliver crud and demand gold bars for it. Because they know nobody will do anything about it.
The customers will be unhappy. How else? They've been promised the moon in two weeks. A year later they haven't got anything. In an established industry like construction the liquidated damages would have begun months ago.
I passed this thread around the office where I work - a medium large construction company. The unanimous response was "How the hell can you make money like that? Are software executives all smoking crack or something?"
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
To be a programmer, you need to be able to understand and solve technical problems. To be a project manager, you need to be able to understand resourcing, management and in some sense, sales problems. Project managers are stuck between the techs, who want to do things technically as well as they can, and managers who need to do things cheaply and make the best profit, and sales types who need a project that is sellable.
You need to compromise your desire for technical perfection to be able to relate to all the concerned parties. You need to see it from their point of view as well as from the tech's point of view. Just like it's sub-optimal having a non-technical project manager (at least, from the tech's point of view), it's also sub-optimal to have a purely techo project manager...
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Yes, it seems we've achieved that rarest of things - a well-reasoned Slashdot thread ending in consensus!
I definitely agree that refactoring is an investment which has a cost and a benefit. If a piece of code isn't going to be touched again, it shouldn't be refactored.
And that it is the point at which we agree. You see, when I started I used to be all in favour of rewriting anything ugly or inelegant. Anything. Never really thought about the fact that whilst I was doing that I wasn't doing something else.
I'm pleased to say that it still pains me to let old rubbish continue festering - losing that pain would essentially mean that I no longer cared about good code, and I do care about good code. However, I'm now quite a bit more aware about software's place in life and what more appropriate priorities are from the business's point of view. After all, they're paying for me. True for every coder, but the relationship is even more direct in the case of a contractor.
And it's funny I would say this -- I'm a consultant, so I'm not even around to see the long-term damage!
Not sure about this, but I think you're using consultant in the same sense I'm using contractor - it seems to be a US/UK jargon split (I'm in the UK). My title is consultant as well - basically a hired analyst/programmer who not employed directly by the company but instead is paid via a service contract (n-months to do x task, option to renew on both sides).
Anyway, to wrap-up from my point of view it seems as if we've not got a great deal of difference between us. Seems we both feel that:
- Use of new techniques for new techniques' sake is bad.
- Use of new techniques because they're actually better and more appropriate to the task in hand is good
- Project Managers that use new techniques for buzzword-compliance are bad
- Project Managers who refuse to consider use of new techniques are also bad
- Rewriting (or refactoring) software which will be used again or which needs to fit into a wider framework is good.
- Rewriting software which whose task will never alter is of questionable value
Seems like a balanced viewpoint to me.Cheers,
Ian