IT Project Manager

[SlayerS_BoxeR]

If you want to become a project manager, is it more common working from front end development or system admin?

[IsItPluggedIn]

Our (smallish) managed service company has just moved away from having dedicated Project managers, we are relying on SDM's to do the project managing. 

 

Not sure if this is across the board or just us.

 

Neither the old account managers or the engineers were happy about the decision. 

[+John Teacake MVC]

That really depends on the company I guess. Give us a bit  more information about your company. You dont have to name names. 

[ITOps]

If you want to become a project manager, is it more common working from front end development or system admin?

 

This would depend on the project, but you would need to insure the person managing your project has technical knowledge and experience in the domain of the project.  No way I would allow someone that has no real world work as a system administrator manage a systems administration project (building out server infrastructure, migrations, etc.) as they would have no real world experience on how long any of these tasks would take or their difficulty levels so their projects would be way off or they would just be wigging it which is unacceptable.  Same would go for a PM for managing website design projects, if they have not experienced the going back and forth with the customer or other required testing that goes on with front end development they would not be able to accurately project the time frames required for front end work.

 

If you have the technical experience you can move into doing project management work by getting a PMP certification which would require you to have real world experience and work under your belt.  From your work you may not have been official designated as a PM but there is a pretty good chance many of the projects you have done over the years would be able to be added up to the required hours for the certification.  There are also PRINCE2 and other PM certifications you can use to get an official entry-level PM job.

[Skiver Veteran]

As others have said, it depends on what their role would be. For example our developement team have "Product leaders" who from the development side keep everyone in check in terms of development etc as well as team leaders who lead individual feature release projects. These guys all have hands on experience in developing said products and could not do their job without it.

 

However we also have fully fledged PM's that are their without any true product knowledge who manage our professional services projects. In the sense of organising meetings/calls to discuss requirements, scheduling resources and just making sure projects are carried out to the time allotted. They deal with many different products so it would be unreasonable to ask them to know technical details in any depth, they rely upon the technical professional services guy to sort the technical details out.

[sc302 Veteran]

To be a good project manager is to fully understand the project at hand from nuts and bolts all the way up to the completed project. 

 

If you take a car for example, you would fully understand how to build the, engine, the transmission, the frame, the body, how to install the doors and windows, tires, brakes, suspension, interior, hvac, and everything else that makes up the car.  You don't have to do it, but you understand why a bolt is where it is.  This is so that when management asks about that bolt or part you can give a good explanation as to why it is there other than "it just goes there".  You are the liaison between the techs, engineers, and management.  You convert geek speak to simple understandable terms that management can understand, you also have a good understanding of the budget and where you need to put your money into as well as time needed for the completion of the project. 

 

Or you can just go in and wing it and hope it gets done right, pray no one has questions on either end and sit in an office playing solitaire or finding porn (that works for some too).