Why project managers get no respect
July 7th, 2008
I bet there is not a child alive today who dreams of being a project manager. Maybe a firefighter, a rock star or an astronaut, but not a PM. There is something inherently dull about the words “project” and “manager” - even the flames of a bright imagination would smolder out in their presence. And it follows that in professional ranks, saying you are a project manager won’t get you much respect either. To many being a PM means you fit this unfortunate stereotype: you were not good enough in your field to be an engineer or a programmer, and through politics and self-inflation, you find ways to take credit for the hard work done by others. It stings, but that’s the stereotype (Ask around at your next happy hour).
Many PMs unintentionally reinforce this view by trying to get everyone to pay attention to the work they do produce: the meta work of spreadsheets, specifications, presentations and status reports, failing to realize that to most in any organization, these are the least interesting and most bureaucratic things produced in the building. This mismatch of value sends the PM and his/her team into a downward spiral: the PM asking for more and more respect in ways guaranteed to push people further away.
The core problem is perspective. Our culture does not think of movie directors, executive chefs, astronauts, brain surgeons, or rock stars as project managers, despite the fact that much of what these cool, high profile occupations do is manage projects. The difference is these individuals would never describe themselves primarily as project managers. They’d describe themselves as directors, architects or rock stars first, and as a projects manager or team leaders second. They are committed first to the output, not the process. And the perspective many PMs have is the opposite: they are committed first to the process, and their status in the process, not the output.
The result is that most of the world thinks of project management as BORING. Not sure how it happened, but instead of thinking of the great moments in PM history, say the NASA space race, The D-Day invasion of Normandy, The construction of the pyramids, the Empire State building, or any of a thousand great things made possible only by someone’s effective management of the project, people think of pocket protectors, overdesigned charts, epic status reports, and people who spend too much time in rooms filled exclusively with other project managers. If you are not going out of your way to separate yourself from the stereotype, odds are good that when you say “I’m a project manager” the person you are talking to puts you into a Dilbert cartoon in their mind, and you are the punchline.
People with job titles like “Program Manager” (What I was called at Microsoft), “Product Manager”, “Information Architect” or “Quality Assurance manager” have similar problems. These titles all makes it hard to relate to what it really is that the person gets paid to make happen: a sure sign of title inflation, confusion via over-specialization, or abstraction from the real work. I suspect all of these folks have similar problems with getting respect from people when they introduce themselves with their literal job title (process), instead of what it is they help make (output).
The news isn’t all bad. This lack of respect creates a huge opportunity for people with open minds: their expectations of you are low. If you take the time to find out what it is that the people on the project need from you, or value from you, and make that as large a part of your job as possible, you’ll get more respect than you expect. And you may find that people start referring to you as a different kind of PM - one who has changed their opinion of what PMs can do for a team - and you’ll earn not only their respect, but their trust and best work too.
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Amen, brother. And I say this as a programmer, not a PM - I tried PM, hated it and was terrible at it. Dear Lord, send us more PM’s like this.
[...] not process Posted July 7, 2008 Filed under: web | Nice post from Scott Berkun about misunderstanding the project manager role, both by outsiders and some PMs: [...]
I’ve heard project management described as accounting minus the dollars plus man hours and tasks. That’s probably where the boring comes in.
Nevertheless, and honestly now - how many programmers are really working on something that is not fundamentally boring for a paycheck? Is it any more exciting to work on fuel nozzle velocity dynamics than to be managing that project?
I think some people actually consider writing Java middleware for financial institutions to be exciting, but for each one there’s a project manager who also thinks his job is something special.
Plus, I think the pyramids are not a good example of great project management. Great empire building maybe, but slave labor plays havoc with efficiency and resource consumption constraints.
Here is my biggest problem with most PMs, from my limited experience in the industry as a developer. Most PMs try to lead a team to project completion, rather than help the team. As in, the manager will tell this developer to work on this subsystem, or finish a given spec sheet, or whatever. Engineers tend to know how they can best use their skills (and other team members’ skills) to implement a project. This leads to conflicts between developers, and lambasting of the management.
The best manager I’d ever had on a project left the few engineers on the project to divvy up the work according to their strengths and timelines, and remained on the project to figure out the answers to questions from the developers.
Someone once told me that I would be a good project manager, so I read a textbook about the field and asked around. It sounded like the worst white-collar job on the planet. No thank you.
Thanks for the great article, I just wanted to point out that the role of the PM has changed drastically from what it was 15 years ago with the advent of agile methodologies. I believe (and I may be totally wrong) that many of the smaller code shops are having good success with the manager stepping out of the director role and more into the scrum master role.
The days of MS project where each developer was daily allocated 35% to this project, 55% to that one, and 60% to yet another ( I know it doesn’t add up) are for the most part behind us..
As for the “traditional” PM role being boring..
Coders (to which I am one) are not stupid, when you see a guy spend 2 days a week from 9-5 in a boardroom with other suits, there is no box of donuts big enough to make those meetings any less excruciating. Especially those “pass the buck ones” on missed launch dates. To make it worse, just stick the PM on a 2 hour teleconference with his offshore shop at the oddest times of day or even better, whisk them off on a red-eye flight for a next day meeting. The word is “hell”, not “boring”!
Lastly, any PM that isn’t a micro-manager and is a team player will be supported if and when the shit hits the fan.
Thanks again for the great article.. great read
ilan berci
I partialy agree…I’m a sw-dev/architect and I think I won’t be ineterested in becoming a PM (at least in the next 5 years). Anyway I think the big issue is that for almost all the small-company-bosses with no experience in programming there’s no difference between a PM and a Technical Leader. What do they need? A PM? A TechLeader? And this is bad…
Most PMs get no respect because they took the job to make more money. They show no interest in learning how to do the job well.
I go way back to a story written by Jerry Weinberg in one of his books. He was a programmer and had a stressful home life. He wanted to become a manager so he could make more money and hire a housekeeper to reduce the stress at home. He then realized that his home life was stressful because he was a lousy manager at home. If he was lousy at managing a home, why would he be any better at managing at work.
He remained a programmer.
Dwayne: That might be true, but if we’re going to criticize people for taking jobs that earn them more money, we’d be criticizing a large percentage of people. Frankly, if bad PMs are the norm in any organization the problem isn’t the PMs, it’s whoever is responsible for hiring them.
Ilan: There is something to be said for being the guy who takes “boring meeting” bullet for the team. If the PM can be in the room and prevent stupid decisions from happening, while allowing the programmers to do what they love, which is to write code, the have a great deal of value to those programmers.
Just got my PMP… you guys are depressing me =)=)
I’ll try and keep the dev’s perspective in mind, I promise =)
Amen! One of the truest write-ups I’ve ever read on the fate and state of PMs. Especially true in the software industry
[...] no-nonsense, common sense advice is a good read whether or not your business card title reads “Project Manager.” If [...]
I think PM’s aren’t respect because they focus too much on process/procedures over leadership. As a PM, or any job title, you control your destiny. You can LEAD the project or enforce meetings and procedures. If PM’s would focus more on the people involved in their projects over the process maybe they would get more respect.
I’m not the biggest fan of certain PM’s myself, but to be fair you need to step inside the shoes of the PM.
PM’s # 1 job is to deliver value. The rest is secondary. I’m not saying the secondary is unimportant(leadership, team welfare etc) but once you realize what their #1 is, it’s easier to see where they are coming from. I think not everyone looks at it from his / her shoes.
[...] scottberkun.com » Why project managers get no respect [...]
[...] Why Project Managers Get No Respect A great insight into project managers and why so many people don’t respect them. I think this is a great article because I know a number of people who don’t respect their managers (mine is great though). [...]
Great article. It made me smile. I am a PM and yes, this article stung a bit, but I realized I’m doing much more for my team than this article outlines. PMs who act as the first point of contact for their projects and field initial questions about status, defects, etc. are valuable. I act as a shield for my developers so that they aren’t in meetings all day and don’t have to answer calls with requests for additional changes to requirements.
Lisa: I totally agree. You used a key word - value. Value as defined by the other people working on the project. As long as the work the PM does is seen as valuable, and a net plus, by the actual project team members, they deserve respect.
The problem is I can think of a single book, course, certificate, or degree around project management that centers on this view.
And I’d go further - shielding is the first level, but higher levels of value include leadership, crisis management, planning, cross-discipline decision making, and on it goes.
Its easy to see the need for PM when projects are handed to inexperienced PMs, that are really technical leads of their area of expertise, that have little or no training running projects. These projects usually run late, over budget, or under quality.
The devs/engs can always blame everyone else - I mean heck, its not their fault that marketing didn’t describe the requirements in enough detail and they had to redo most of the work.
Enter the PM - the savior to this problem. He is the ring leader, orchestrating the project, taking full responsibility. Bad wrap? Ug, well, remember the days of failing projects - where everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
[...] scottberkun.com » Why project managers get no respect “The result is that most of the world thinks of project management as BORING.” (tags: projectmanagement career) This entry was posted by delicious on Wednesday July 16th, 2008 at 4:30 am in Links SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “links for 2008-07-16″, url: “http://www.rodenas.org/blog/2008/07/16/links-for-2008-07-16/” }); [...]
Because most of them have not managed to earn it…
[...] scottberkun.com » Why project managers get no respect “Project Manager” is a term that recalls people who focus on process. The best project managers, though; are the artists and people who focus on the product: outcome, rather than process. (tags: business projectmanagement articles) [...]
Berkun on PMs and Respect…
Since I riffed on Manny Ramirez and Theo Epstein earlier (here), let’s continue the baseball metaphor. Scott Berkun drives a “hanger” a long way when he highlights how PMs sabotage their personal brands (here). The money quote:
M…
Hi,
A very nice post. My personal feeling about PMs who’ve made it their calling, may need some personal counseling to have to put up with the crap day-in-and-day-out :).
For some of the respondents, I’d be curious how they’d feel about “accidental project managers” which for those in the IT side of things, most are. It’s not like the construction industry for example, where project management is a recognized and respect professional choice. Most IT guys doing PM work got there because they got the short end of the straw so to speak or they really didn’t know what they got into when they accepted the mission to work “miracles” :).
Project management by process is lack of PM maturity and it takes a lot of practice and learning from failures to improve one’s PM skills. PM’ing doesn’t come naturally IMHO because most people get by by following process (i.e. be a good corporate ‘team player’) than delivering results/outcomes.
Thanks for this article!
-Lui