Good topic. I agree the world is full of people that manage initiatives and call themselves project managers, but that neither what they do or are, truely is Project Management. Project Management is a skill and an art in and of itself that requires the practitioner to be a dedicated student and experiential learner.

While I also agree that a piece of paper doesn’t prove you are a good Project Manager, I believe with it’s requirement to demonstrate thousands of hours of verifyable practical experience, PMI goes further than most. Also, remember that the PMBOK was intended to be a guide to a standard focusing on “what” not “how”. It has it’s purpose. The specific how and how-to’s of “Sixth Sense” training I refer to in my post fills that gap and is why I found it to be such a terrific and valuable experience.

Love your PM passion!

Your point is very much valid, I have seen a lot of people oppose the idea of shifting to project management, despite having good management skills and promising career path, they do not want to take the risk of being responsible for projects, the idea is quite common amongst both juniors and experienced people.

They work in projects and see the magnitude of responsibilities put on the project manager and they visualize in the same troubles and get scared, some reasons that scare them are:

- Culture: a lot of organizations do not value the project manager’s role, yet they want one!

- Organizational Awareness: many organizations have projects but when you try to ask people how they understand the meaning of a project they fail to give an answer, this makes the life of the project manager so bad, especially in weak matrix organization (read my previous post about Weak Matrix Syndrome on this blog)

- Complexity of the job : a project manager is the hub for the project activities and communication, not everyone will like the idea of complex communication

The bottom line is that, people prefer to do the work rather than manage the work, they can deliver very specific and defined task but they are not willing to take the responsibility and high risk of failure, and by the way most of these people work on projects that FAIL, that’s why they never want to be project managers!

Thanks Brian for your great inputs!

It’s because many good people see the challenges and abuse heaped on PMs and say, “no way am I subjecting myself to that when I can stay in software development (or network engineering or functional management or whatever) and face far less confrontation.” (Not that those careers don’t have their own challenges.) I vaguely remember a definition of a PM as someone who does something that’s never been done before with too few resources for someone who doesn’t know what they want. I guess not enough people want to jump into that arena!

As for the certification, I see value in it if it’s used properly by the PM and viewed properly by the hiring manager. Again, great article and thanks for provoking a great discussion.

Good Luck!

A lot of people are saying PM certification is not important, well, they should get it, it won’t harm but it definitely can help, like many people commented, a lot of companies screen resumes based on the criteria of certified or not certified.

Herein my response to you: “Who Moved my Cheese?”

Yes sadly that is exactly what is and will keep happening. I was speaking to a friend in the US yesterday who has so much fantastic experience of delivering big high profile projects. He told he he had to be PMP etc qualified otherwise Corporations wouldn’t even look at his CV despite his contacts.

How pathetic is that? But sadly I see project management going to same way as IT Networking. With the advent of the MCP and MCSE (all multiple choice) the market was flooded with supposedly qualified people. It caused market rates to tumble and the amount of networking disasters to go up.

I don’t know what the answer is sadly as we appear to be on a one way path to mediocrity and ultimately causing project manager’s to become glorified paper pushers.

Regards

Susan de Sousa
Site Editor http://www.my-project-management-expert.com

I absolutely love this blog post. One of the things that I’m seeing here in the United States is the abundance of people who get into the project management profession for the supposed power and prestige that comes with the position. This tends to happen with any management job, not just project management.

Project managers need to have a clear, holistic picture of what being a project manager means. They also need a good support system or mentor that can help guide them through the ups and downs of managing projects.

I wonder how many companies out there actually have a project management training program where they require new or emerging project managers to participate before they assume leadership of a project. I would LOVE to see this.

Jhaymee Wilson
@TheGreenPM (on Twitter)

I don’t believe such organizations would care about motivation, believe me it is all about taking the blame, and letting fingers know where to point when the crisis hits!

It also may be for cosmetic reasons, if you have a project you must have a project manager as well! otherwise there would be no project, quite funny

I really like your perspective, companies visualize the project management as the remedy for all problems and they provide zero support for the project manager in order to succeed, this is quite ironic!

About Risk, nobody is acting upon risks, rather risks act upon us, when they hit then the real pain is felt!

You shouldn’t be wondering why companies hire a PM if they neither understand nor support a project manager’s role, because when the project fails someone will have to be there to take all the BLAME!

Thank you for your comment,

You are absoultely right, and the results you mentioned are already happening today, the market is already saturated, and this defintely led to less pay for good project managers, during recession times companies will always seek mediocre candidates to cut costs, looks like that project management is the new job for the jobless!

Start talking about risk management and Transparency and you’ll scare them rigid. They’ll think they have employed a line manager with the wrong attitude or as I have heard many time the wrong management style.