What exactly is a "IT Project Manager" and why is it in such high demand?

[psteng19]

Text

It's in demand in every market.
What exactly does this job entail?

 

[slsmnaz]

Sit on your rear, send lots of email and schedule time-wasting meetings. I have yet to find real skills in many of our PM's besides those.

 

[FoBoT]

they make visio's and setup endless meetings and do lots of emails

they don't actually do anything, they make sure the real workers do their jobs so something is actually accomplished

the ratio of PM's to real workers needs to be 5:1 at least for any project to succeed and the total salary of the Pm's must be at least 10:1 of the people doing the work


other than that, i have no idea

 

[Mxylplyx]

Originally posted by: psteng19
Text

It's in demand in every market.
What exactly does this job entail?

Coordinating a team of programmers, business analysts, users, etc in order to develop an IT solution from concept to production.

 

[mooglekit]

As far as I can tell from those that I work with, they are marginally tech savvy chumps who tell you they need everything done by yesterday...but I could be exposed to a bad crop

 

[frankie38]

Project mgrs, project management, and PMO are all valuable skills/jobs to have in large project driven business. the outlook is bright since many of the worker bees are being offshored and the project managers are needed to manage offshore and coordinate onshore resources.

 

[slatr]

http://www.pmi.org/info/default.asp

 

[tfinch2]

Waste everyone's time. Fart around with the analysts.

 

[ggnl]

They have people skills. They talk to the end users so the programmers don't have to.

 

[slsmnaz]

Originally posted by: ggnl
They have people skills. They talk to the end users so the programmers don't have to.

Nope, that's the BA.

 

[leftyman]

what used to be called a BOSS

 

[spidey07]

PM job is to do project mangagement.

Essentially getting others to do all the work, PM just does all the planning, communication, scheduling and tracking. They are the KEY to success.

It's in high demand because very few IT people can be good project managers.

 

[nakedfrog]

They take the specs to the programmers.
Well, their secretary does it, or sometimes the fax machine.
But they have people skills, dammit, can't you see that? What the hell is wrong with you people?!?!?

 

[Phokus]

anyone here a project manager?

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: spidey07
PM job is to do project mangagement.

Essentially getting others to do all the work, PM just does all the planning, communication, scheduling and tracking. They are the KEY to success.

It's in high demand because very few IT people can be good project managers.

x2. The PM is a MANAGER; he doesn't have to know how to work all the boxes. He just has to know WHO knows how to work all the boxes. It's simply ensuring the right people are doing the right jobs in the right order, on time.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Phokus
anyone here a project manager?

I wore that hat for roughly a year at my last job. In charge of the SysAdmin shop, 9 people under me. It was rough b/c I wasn't considered "the project manager." I was the department manager, so I took crap from the people under me AND the people over me. I was a toilet...everyone pooped on me. BUT, I did a darn good job and got the projects done on time...that's the bottom line.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

The project manager is responsible for making making sure the IT project is delivered on time within budget.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: mooglekit
As far as I can tell from those that I work with, they are marginally tech savvy chumps who tell you they need everything done by yesterday...but I could be exposed to a bad crop

Nope... That's about par for the course. Slsmnaz's definition is the best one I've seen so far.

For more information, read the last year or so of Dilbert and pay attention to what the Pointy Haired Boss says. That's an IT Project Manager!

 

[Patt]

I'm on my way to becoming one Our company sorely needs it, and I want the corresponding responsibility & $$$$

 

[Aharami]

my PM wastes more of my time with status calls and status meetings than actually helps me accomplish anything

 

[Danman]

I was one for a little bit. Hated it because I hated the projects, it was a government project that was a complete waste of time and was this before I was even there. Now I'm in a System Engineering position I love.

 

[BoomerD]

Not sure exactly what "it" is, but Ebay seems to advertise "IT" a lot...

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: spidey07
PM job is to do project mangagement.

Essentially getting others to do all the work, PM just does all the planning, communication, scheduling and tracking. They are the KEY to success.

It's in high demand because very few IT people can be good project managers.

being a project manager myself on some projects here at my job, we are the glue that hodls you sawdust mofos together. we are also the end decision makers, the last line of responsibility and the ones who lose the bonus if the job goes into liquidated damages. saying they just sit around and schedule meetings and send emails is like saying a brain surgeon puts band aids on owies. ;]

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: Aharami
my PM wastes more of my time with status calls and status meetings than actually helps me accomplish anything

thats due to your flawed perspective. he isnt there to help you, you are doing a job for him. you are there to help him. he has many other people like you helping him as well, and he needs to make sure your job is done at the right time so others can do the next phase. step back and look at the rest of the specs, your sections are only a blip in that book.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: slsmnaz

Originally posted by: ggnl
They have people skills. They talk to the end users so the programmers don't have to.

Nope, that's the BA.

Yup.

A good PM's job is to clear problems from the BA's path. The ones that I've worked with have been reasonably good; they handle escalation to upper management (VP's and above) when their BA's run into roadblocks and they deal with vendor issues when the vendors give the BA a hard time. (I had one PM who managed to get a particularly bad vendor contact fired after I'd been screwed over one too many times by the vendor.)

Mind you, this is my experience in a multi-national corporation with over 30,000 employees in the US alone, so it may very well be different in smaller environments.

Yes the status meetings and updates seem wasteful, but they are necessary to be able to give the high-level management (VP and above) confidence in the project and thereby assure that the project keeps moving. Most BA's seem to believe that project happen in a vacuum and that as long as it gets done, everything's OK. That's simply not true. There's a massive bureaucratic and political machine that a project has to navigate through and a good PM can guide that path.

ZV