How Did You Become a Project Manager - Survey Results
More than a month ago I published my post How Do People Become Project Managers? about a survey performed at the Projects@Work site and I decided to ask the same questions to my readers. Only 9 people participated at my survey but the interesting thing is that their answers concur with the answers given to the Projects@Work’s survey.
Here are my questions and their answers:
1. How did you become a Project Manager?
- By accident - 7 (77%)
- By choice - 2 (22%)
2. Did you have formal PM training before your first assignment?
- No - 7 (77%)
- Yes - 2 (22%)
3. Do you like being a project manager?
- Yes - 6 (66%)
- No - 3 (33%)
The answers my readers gave bring me to the same conclusion I made in my previous post: people come to the project manager’s profession surprisingly and unprepared. Nevertheless, most of them begin to like their work and find it interesting.
I wonder what could it be if we had more training and a better promotion to our profession…
Filed Under Polls, The Role of the Project Manager | 2 Comments
How Can a PM Become a Real Leader?
Tom Mochal of TenStep wrote an article in the Project Management Blog of TechRepublic called Exhibit leadership on challenging projects where he argues that the challenging projects are the ultimate place where the project managers can show and test their leadership skills. He gives a list of advises what a project manager should do to become a real leader in case trouble reaches his or her project. I would only note that Tom Mochal’s advises are very helpful not only for troubled projects but for all projects. Following them can guarantee a very high probability a project to succeed. Here they are:
- Keep your eyes on the big picture. When things get tough, everybody’s temptation is to become acutely focused on the problems. A leader stays focused on the vision of completing the project objectives. When everyone in the team tends to run into details, your leadership keeps everyone focused on the big picture and the value you’re providing.
- Maintain team cohesion. When circumstances get tough, even the most loyal team members can tend to become pessimistic. Team members are tempted to start shooting perceived enemies and, unfortunately, they sometimes shoot each other. They begin to question each other and find fault with one another. The real leader fights this urge and helps the team stick together.
- Be the first to sacrifice. When there’s pain to share, leaders should do just that. If the team needs to work overtime, the project manager should work overtime as well. If the project team needs to come in on Saturday, the project manager needs to be in as well. Don’t just share the pain — take more than your share (but not all) of it.
Well, this is the only point I wouldn’t agree much with. If you take the blame, the sacrifice, and most of the pain you wouldn’t be able to continue leading the team. You would be thrown away. I agree the leader should share the team’s burden but at the same time they should keep their dignity and authority. (Mike) - Remain calm. Panic is a common human emotion and no one is immune to it. A leader, however, thinks the problems through and remains rational. Being calm will enable the leader to make the right decisions for the entire team. Panic only leads to disaster, while calm leads to victory.
- Motivate. In tough and challenging times, people tend to get emotionally drained. They can’t see how it’s all going to work out. The project manager should focus on motivating the team and show how the result will be good. A leader must remain positive and likewise keep the team positive.
- Create small wins. When things are bad, the team starts to wonder how they can win. The project manager should look for ways to win — even small, interim victories. With each small win, the leader will build esteem and a positive attitude.
- Keep a sense of humor. Hardly anything in life can’t be laughed at. As the project manager you need to look for opportunities to instill fun, and laugh at yourself and the situations that present themselves.
When project managers show leadership, the team will follow - maybe not immediately, but eventually. The project manager is the person to lead the charge and to keep the entire project on track.
How Do People Become Project Managers?
The Projects@Work site performs a monthly survey and the July’s questions were very interesting for me because they brought very interesting answers.
Question No. 1: Did you pursue a position in project management or did you “fall into it”?
Answers:
- By choice: 30%
- By accident: 70%
What does it mean? It means that the upper managers still don’t appreciate the role of the project manager. They don’t raise and don’t educate people to be ones. The position of the project manager is still filled “on the fly”, most often by technical persons (in the case of the software development - by senior programmers). I have such observation among some Bulgarian software companies but the results of this survey show that the situation is not much better in the United States either.
I’ve seen another example, too. A guy asks to be a project manager and the upper manager says: “Oh, you’re too ambitious. I can’t allow you to take this position. Tomorrow you may ask to sit in my chair. No way!”
Question No. 2: Did you have formal project management training before your first assignment?
Answers:
- Yes: 15%
- No: 85%
The answers to this question explicitly confirm my opinion that the company management totally neglects the profession of the project manager. They don’t understand the importance of this role and they don’t develop their human resources for that. It seems that the management considers the role of the PM as the “necessary evil” and they have PM’s just because it’s a common notion.
If you pay a closer attention to the numbers you’ll see that the people with a formal training are twice less than the people who intended to be project managers. It means that even among the people who really want to develop themselves into our profession only half of them have the chance to get a formal professional training. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is some data showing that a significant part of the people who had formal training have paid for it by themselves.
Question No. 3: Do you consider project management a long-term career or a “stepping-stone” in your professional aspirations?
Answers:
- Career: 60%
- Stepping-stone: 40%
At the end, the answers to the last question show me that the most of the project managers like their job and they consider it to be their future career too. No matter how unappreciated the profession is, we still like it; it gives us the feeling of doing something important, of significantly contributing to the project’s (and respectively - the company’s) success, of creating something useful for the customer, something that makes their life better.
As I said before, I have some observations among the software companies in Bulgaria but I would like to gather some information “from the source”. That’s why I am asking you - my readers - the same questions (a little modified only to take less space) in order to see if the results are the same in other places in the world. I believe most of you are from Bulgaria but there are also people from all over the world and everyone’s opinion will be useful.
Is it the same in your company? Or in your country? How can we prove that the profession of the project manager is important and that one of the sure ways to increase the probability of a project’s success is to have better trained and motivated project managers?
If you are a project manager or you are somehow involved in project management practices or in software development, or you just have an opinion on the subject, please, answer the questions on the sidebar or send me your comments. I would greatly appreciate that.
The 20 Qualities of the Inspirational Leader
There was an article in All About Agile blog, entitled 20 Qualities of an Agile Leader. Well, the title is a little misleading and the author clarifies later that all kind of teams need inspirational leadership and these are the 20 qualities of the inspirational leader:
- Strong communication – storytelling and listening
- Passion for learning and intense curiosity
- Focus on developing people
- Having fun and being very energized
- Strong self-belief, coupled with humanity and humility
- Committed to making a significant difference
- Clarity of vision and ability to share it with others
- Dogged determination and often relentlessness
- Strong focus on priorities
- Not afraid to show some vulnerability
- Regular use of reflective periods to think and learn
- Real passion and pride in what they do
- Confidence and trust in their teams, giving them real empowerment
- Respect for all (team members, temps, customers, suppliers and directors alike)
- Clear standards of ethics and integrity; openness and honesty
- Ability to drive, inspire and embrace change and continuous improvement
- Positive attitude at all times and an innate ability to be diplomatic in any circumstances
- Lateral thinking and ability to find innovative ideas and solutions to problems
- Ability to inspire and motivate others
- Willingness to take (calculated) risks
I find this list quite comprehensive. I marked the ones I find most important for me in blue. I find them the most important probably because I still need to improve these qualities in me. How about you? Do you agree with all the points? What are the most important ones for you? Do you have all these qualities?
Filed Under Leadership, The Role of the Project Manager | 5 Comments
The 3 Most Important Qualities of a Project Manager
Gina Lijoi of Interactive Project Management blog gives the 3 keys to project management success: finesse, time management and multitasking. I’ll put a brief comment on each of them (my 2 cents).
- Finesse. This stands for the ability to talk to people politely and convincingly. Sometimes this is the only “weapon” a project manager has to influence the customers, the managers or the team members.
- Time management. The essence of managing projects, especially software projects, is to complete them on time. I know many people who have problems with managing their times. A tip of advise from me: make notes and use software organizers. It’s human nature to forget. But if you are a project manager - it’s not forgivable.
- Multitasking. I would call it “ability to focus dynamically”. The project manager should be able to focus on a single task at a given time but should be able to switch to the other quickly and should never lose sight of “the big picture”.
Read her entire post here. It is worth it.
Software Project Management Again
I started a blog long time ago although I didn’t know what to write in it. So I’ve been ignoring it for a while but now I am determined to continue blogging. I hope it would be interesting for the people who work in the software development field.
I had several meetings with former colleagues recently where I heard different comments regarding the role of the project manager and I got the impression that most of the developers consider every task they don’t like or don’t understand as a responsibility of the project manager. Which made me think that although there are a lot of books on the topic of project management and the role of the project manager, still many people don’t know what exactly this is and have their own idea about it.
Many people think that the project manager is like a parent and should take care of them as they were children. Many people think that project management is for project managers only and the project managers are strange species we shouldn’t care about because we are developers and the only think we need to think of is coding.
I think that all the people in the software industry should be taught what project management is and what it has to do with us. The success of a project depends of everybody’s effort so everyone should care about the project management and everyone should perform project management to some extent.
Filed Under Project Management, The Role of the Project Manager | Leave a Comment
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