The PM Evolution

Project Manager Planet recently covered a trend on the evolution of the project manager’s role within an organization. According to author Herman Mehling, it’s a job that is creating more value for both the business and IT sides of companies.

He notes that, “Increasingly, staff PMs are becoming strategic players who bring an independent, almost consultant-like vision to projects as well as hands on skills. Their value lies in their multi-tasking abilities to shepherd projects, improve an organization’s communications, and drive bottom-line efficiencies in products, processes and services.”

Mehling spoke to two Daptiv PPM customers about how they’re seeing this trend as project managers. Here’s what they had to say:

Addie Monson, PMP director in the enterprise project office at one of the largest credit card payment processing companies, Chase Paymentech Solutions, observed that, “At Chase, PMs need to wear multiple hats,” and that, “A PM needs to have aggressive business knowledge as well as IT knowledge, be a player/coach, while contributing to the strategic vision of the company and be able to drill down into tactical issues.”

It’s a shift in a company’s approach to PM that does not always happen organically. Gary Sikma, director of project management at the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, discussed how his team needed to champion their cause, and that his organization, “has progressed from having a limited understanding of project management to an in-depth one over the past five years.” He went on to say that, “It took quite a bit of educating in the early days to get senior management to appreciate that PMs offered something other than IT skills.”

The shifting role of the project manager is something we’ve touched on before, and will continue to keep an eye on as organizations’ needs for trained counsel in both project management and business continues to grow.