Software Project Management Technical Skills

Just asking yourself strong technical skills in what answers the question.

I've got strong technical skills, wouldn't do me a lot of good implementing a server farm though!

More important is managing risk and resource.
If we do x, how long will it take, how many people. What does it impact and how and what does that mean to the project.

OK the PM will have take someone like me's word for it, but if they can't it should be my skills that are questioned not the PMs.

As a project manager, my job is to manage people, tasks and budgets on a project.

I don't have to be up to date on how to code software in the latest languages. In fact I don't have to know a programming language at all.

But that doesn't mean I don't have to be technical. I need to know the software development life cycle (SDLC) backwards and forwards, and thats technical. I should know what a gantt chart looks like (for mid size to large projects anyway). I need to know about resource balancing and how to determine the critical path. Thats fairly technical.

I need to know enough about the technology to be able to either gather or review the requirements. I need to know enough about the technology to be able to ask questions about the design. I need to be able to determine what consititutes adequate QA.

So I'd say that a good PM is technical, just not necessarily a coder.

James

They need to have reasonably good technical skills. Otherwise they will not be able to appreciate the risks and provide mitigation.

PM should have strong IQ level than Technical level. But he should able to know what he is delivering as per client needs rather than doing himself.

I think it depends on the project, of course. A project to oversee the building of a bridge requires far less technical ability than a project to re-write an enterprise-wide inventory system. Since this is TechRepublic, I'll assume the projects are technical in nature.

I feel it is important for the PM to have technical knowledge, but not necessarily technical skill, for a few reasons. Knowing the techniology field makes the ramp-up time much less when the PM has to deal with resources they are managing in the project. Communications will be clearer because the PM knows what they are talking about. Also, the smaller your project (and the fewer your resources, human or financial) the more your PM will need technical skills to serve a greater role on the team. But that's just my opinion....

I love reading job ads and trying to guess if the writer had a clue about what a PM does - and if they have a clue about what they need. Usually not!

The answer depends on what you are really looking for... a PM or a tech leader with some PM knowledge.

Try this experiment. Create a form with seven columns ... Task, PM Technique High, PM Technique Low, People Technique High, People Technique Low, IT Knowledge High, IT Knowledge Basic.

Now at the top of the form, describe the job. Be reasonably specific. Guiding a team through designing a project plan is different from handing them a plan and saying go to it (e.g. the former works the later doesn't). Are they guiding and facilitating (managing) or are they doing?

Now, list each of the duties or tasks. Again be specific ... are they estimating time or are they coordinating, gathering and consolidating estimates?

Now go thru each task and identify the skill set needed. Do they need detailed knowledge of a PM skill (e.g. building a WBS or just basic knowledge). Is this 90% people/communications or do they just need a basic understanding? Each of the three skill sets (PM, People, Technical) has two columns - detailed, and familiar. Put a check under the appropriate one.

When you finish, you'll find a pattern. For a true project manager the pattern will be almost exclusively People and PM detailed, and Technical familiar. For a Technical Team leader, you'll have more checks in the Technical detailed and People detailed and less in the PM detailed.

Unfortunately, most people don't go thru this excercise when hiring ... so they end up asking for the wrong thing entirely and getting disappointed.

Glen Ford
Can Da Software
IS Project Management/Business Analysis

In the ideal world, a software project manager would have strong technical and programming skills. The project manager should be a leader pushing his team to greater success. This, however, is impossible if the project manager does not know what his team is doing on a day-to-day basis.

In the real world, many project managers do not have technical skills. They are entirely dependent upon the technical staff to understand what is going on. They are easily fooled by staff and are unable to resolve differences of opinion. The best they are good for is generating status reports and buying coffee for the team when the project falls apart.

In the ideal world, a software project manager would have strong technical and programming skills. The project manager should be a leader pushing his team to greater success. This, however, is impossible if the project manager does not know what his team is doing on a day-to-day basis.

In the real world, many project managers do not have technical skills. They are entirely dependent upon the technical staff to understand what is going on. They are easily fooled by staff and are unable to resolve differences of opinion. The best they are good for is generating status reports and buying coffee for the team when the project falls apart.

if the team are even trying to take p1ss, then there's something else badly wrong.

No buy in for instance.

As for not being able to take a decision in terms of say using inheritance or composition, the only thing that should matter to a PM is the costs and teh benfits to the project which should be communicated in a way even a non-technical person can understand otherwise it's a failure on teh part of the dev term.

The big problem with non-technical PMs is when they make a decision on something technical because Fred said it was a good idea or they read it in Gartner or somesuch.

The worst one is when they go for quick and dirty early on to give them more resources for later as though a crap foundation can be redressed with a bright shiny window and high quality chintz.

The answer is no. A project manager does not has to have strong technical skills, but it helps. Mostly because these technical skills improves the process of build the scope statement, witch is the base for everything else (you have to know what are you going to do!!!). But to manage a project, what's realy necessary is to plan and control scope, costs, time and quality. As i say "If you don't know how to do, hire someone who knows".

Someone on the team, the PM, the BA, a SME, a user rep, someone, needs to be able to challenge the technical staff and protect the business needs. As a PM with technical background I have successfully challenged estimates, "We can't do that", and more. I just looked at a crappy, user unfriendly screen design, currently in production. The developers swore it has to be that way because of the vendor's interface. No it doesn't - parse the data to display, combine the input for the interface. Developers will argue about how "difficult" something is to do so we need to water down the process and do it a way that is easier for the developers. Wrong. The developers only live with this "difficulty" once. The user lives with it from not on. Someone needs to have enough knowlege to challenge the technicians and defend the business.

I couldn't do the job of all the specialists on my project and with any length of service as a PM I'm removed from up-to-date skills in my specialty anyway.

You can't be a technical expert and an expert PM so get a specialist Project Manager to manage your projects if you want them well managed. Part of their job is to get the technical expertise for the project.

This isn't just in IT - if I'm managing a construction project I need to know if there is a radical new paint out there that suits my building - I don't need to know the intricacies of surface preparation and application but I do need to be able to get assurance from my painters that it is feasible on this project.

A good IT PM is a good analyst (analysis being the ability to find the right questions to get the right answers), has a generalist level knowledge of the technology (enough to be able to translate from and to technologists and read the latest research and critiques), is a specialist in IT projects (able to use the methodologies) and experienced in IT projects (able to anticipate, recognise, avoid and treat regular causes of project failure).

For some projects that require an architect to handle techinical issues, project managers can simply sit back on tech questions. For most situations, domain knowledge is necessary for proj. managers rather than tech. skills.

Yes and No. I have had a few managers whose technical skills were deplorable. It was unbelievable to look at their resume and see what they did and then actually work for them. However, that said, they had two strong skills

1 - Ability to visualize a project
2 - excellent understanding of the project and goals, high level understanding
3 - good at knowing who had what skills

In the end, if a project manager understands scope and the people involved as well as knows how to delegate to contractors when needed. That project manager doesn't need to know very much. Peronsally, I would have preferred having a project manager with a real skillset, but they achieved decent success with knowing very little technicaly.