Simple ProjectZ

I  have to say it first. The title is not mine, I took it from Project Shrink -so before you say I’m using that phrase without notice its origin, take a look to that great blog.

It is true, software development projects are not about computers, languages, compilers, IDE, projects are about humans, and as Bas de Baar says, you have to deal with that!. Before I got promoted to PM, four or five years ago I was a very very happy programmer thinking about how beautiful is to have one problem to solve in front of your computer. It happens all the time for the programmers, they have all their neurons working on the same problem, suddenly they got to pee and during the bathroom time nothing else happens. So at the end when they come back to their desktops they can continue working on the same issue. However project managers deal with humans instead of computers -like their counterparts programmers. So they got to pee, and during the bathroom time the whole word changes because two or even three programmers got to pee too so at that exact moment everything will be late and the PM will not be able to deliver the expected result!

Only now during my reading of one of the Bas de Baar articles I notices that I’m not the only one and found that there are many programmers like me that were suddenly promoted to PMs. Now, few years after and with a little (really little) deeper knowledge about project management I say: Dude you’re so right: humans are the root cause any situation for good or bad, so as project manager you have to deal with them in order to reduce their own chances to impact the project progress.

PM should become the leader and the most pure influencer in order to get the things done. PM could not be a experienced developer, but for sure has to have both of the skills mentioned above to increase their chances to become a succesful PM.