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I work in IT, and I'm on several large, concurrent projects where we have PMs.
Each one of them, down to a person, acts like they're the boss of the analysts and engineers actually doing the work. I received a request from one of them this morning to create user accounts. My team doesn't handle that, and I was never informed of what type of accounts they needed. I get a nastygram back that "I'll take this to someone else if I need to," CCing other employees on my team who are no longer on the project. After all that, the vendor PM still didn't provide all the information required to create the accounts.
I was placed on a new project last week with a brand new PM who has never done this type of work before. He's a nice guy, but clearly in over his head and has no IT background. He's useless.
I have another project where the PM has been out sick for weeks/months and follows up on every single minor issue. She wants to another the status of minor support cases and other super granular data. She's not around enough to help, and being so granular is causing us to lose focus on the bigger picture.
Anyone else find these people to be damn near useless?
I see these project and “ process or business improvement specialists” all over my company and have hardly ever seen Anything improve. I’m sure there are some that bring so value. But by large all I have ever seen is them bringing unneeded expense
Also, I don’t see what good these types of positions are after the rot has set in with the company and you are failing to retain customers or employees If you have a constant revolving door of employees, losing all your talent to the competitors, and customer dissatisfaction, what need is there for project managers or “process improvement” people?
My company was fine 6-7 years ago without all the being inundated with endless gaga reports being funnel down. Too many chiefs with opinions and Agendas . No Indians
The ones I've worked with generally play 'mediator' between different departments who may not have the resources alone to manage a large scale project across different departments. So, in that sense, no I don't find them useless.
That said, they do seem to be dropped into sub-optimal environments to help out, and may not fully understand the nuances of an organization or department they are trying to help. I can see how that can lead to disruption and the stepping on of toes. I think a good project manager who is dropped into those scenarios needs to first listen and evaluate the issues of each department they're working with. If they aren't doing that, then it seems they would be making it very difficult for everyone involved.
Last edited by Sir Quotes A Lot; 04-24-2019 at 10:57 AM..
I received a request from one of them this morning to create user accounts. My team doesn't handle that, and I was never informed of what type of accounts they needed. I get a nastygram back that "I'll take this to someone else if I need to," CCing other employees on my team who are no longer on the project. After all that, the vendor PM still didn't provide all the information required to create the accounts.
You should have replied that requests need to go through the Business Analyst or Change Control Board. Never directly to the developer.
I work in IT, and I'm on several large, concurrent projects where we have PMs.
Each one of them, down to a person, acts like they're the boss of the analysts and engineers actually doing the work. I received a request from one of them this morning to create user accounts. My team doesn't handle that, and I was never informed of what type of accounts they needed. I get a nastygram back that "I'll take this to someone else if I need to," CCing other employees on my team who are no longer on the project. After all that, the vendor PM still didn't provide all the information required to create the accounts.
I was placed on a new project last week with a brand new PM who has never done this type of work before. He's a nice guy, but clearly in over his head and has no IT background. He's useless.
I have another project where the PM has been out sick for weeks/months and follows up on every single minor issue. She wants to another the status of minor support cases and other super granular data. She's not around enough to help, and being so granular is causing us to lose focus on the bigger picture.
Anyone else find these people to be damn near useless?
90% of them are, there are a few good ones. As an IT analyst I almost always wind up doing both my job and the PM’s. Most don’t understand the work required or even the data we need to do it or realistic timeframes.
It's funny to see companies way-undersized for hiring such positions doing so because they saw a larger company doing it. What could have been a "busy-work job" for someone's best friend, with little purpose, emulated because someone thought that's what they ought to be doing (without understanding why).
Now, this has evolved into a discipline, replete with certifications, classes, and standards. It's "justified" as a way to control costs and adhere to schedules. There is the paradox of adding fixed costs (FTE) to save on variable costs, so hopefully this is someone who can add value to a huge enterprise, and not a case where someone can't pay their own salary with the impact they make.
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