…manage projects without being the subject matter specialist. I had a disagreement with the I.T director today. He says Project manager doesn’t need to know the subject to manage different business unit projects.
I don’t see how one can implement I.T projects for Finance or marketing without having somwhat decent understanding of these subjects.
Depends on the role the PM is playing.. if he/she is just maintaining a schedule then sure don't need to know all that carpola but if the PM is performing the duty of a true PM then yes he/she needs to be familiar with the business/process to a great extent. I believe even the developers need to be familiar with business to some extent. I have seen careers of IT folks who mixed in business knowledge with technical, take off like a rocket, they can beat any techie out there who doesn't have biz knowledge. At the end of the day the goal is to deliver a project to the client and if the people working on the project or managing the project are familiar with what the clients do you have a killer project in your hands.
Boss,
I'm inclined to agree with your I.T. Director on this one.
In a number of my consulting engagements, I have been involved as an SME where someone else was managing the project. When I think of expertise, it is imperative for the PM to at least have Domain Expertise so that they can understand the company’s systems, processes and people, but it is the individual SMEs' who bring in the Business Process Expertise and the Methodology Expertise and it is these that help in determining requirements, and specifying project goals etc. Furthermore, it is the SMEs' that need to have the Recognized Competence so that its easier for the team to solicit top management buy-in, and buy-in from their individual businesses.
I think its important to segregate these roles in any project to ensure efficient project completion. As an example, the PM should ask the SMEs to relate real-work scenarios or problems that are likely to happen. SMEs in turn realize that if they provide examples of frequently occurring situations the deliverable is going to be much more useful. However, at the same time, the problems SMEs find most interesting can often be at the outside edge of their work. It is the PMs who should then direct the focus to common use cases rather than obscure incidents.
For large projects, the setups that I have observed to work best include:
1) A Program Manager who has broad Domain Expertise – this person is usually an external consultant who brings in Best Practices knowledge.
2) A Project Manager who has specific Domain Expertise – this person should be internal to the firm and should have independence and authority.
3) Subject Matter Experts from different business areas who have BPM Expertise– these people provide ongoing input and insights to the development of the deliverable.
There’s a good industry article on “Project Sociology” that I’d recommend as a valuable reading. It talks about the different stakeholder roles that make or break a project. You can prolly find it on google. Here’s a quick diagram – in here, the PM is part of the core “Producer” whereas the SMEs are participants and collaborators on the outside.
[thumb=F]project_diagram531_7847294.JPG[/thumb]
Boss, you and the IT director are both right. The closer to move to the front office side of the business the less credible the IT world gets. In my opinion IT PM's are enablers not really have insights into intricacies of the business, the dependencies of processes and touchpoints of people. For example, change management to an IT person means lines of code...while in a Business concept it could mean process change implications from volume growth, M&A, product and services introductions etc..
So a PM better be well versed in the business process the closer it moves to the front office side of the business. IN banking, generally, the PM usually has gone through extensive training in the front, middle, back offices, both ops re: process and tech before he can take ont he role.