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Ask HN: What Do Good Technical Project Managers Do Well?
- jph 5y agoCommunicate. Good technical project managers do continuous communication with the team, including the engineers, upward with management, and outward with relevant stakeholders.
- elpakal 5y agoI’m sure this is a good skill to have but if I remove the word “technical” from your second sentence I would think that would now apply to all PMs. I guess I’m wondering really how TPM is different than PM.
- beardyw 5y agoA good PM should have an adequate understanding of the problem and the solution. That requires both business and technical knowledge. Very good PMs are rare.
- version_five 5y agoGood managers shield their team from all the noise coming from above, and give them a calm environment to work in. Bad managers amplify the noise and make the team feel every silly whim of upper management.
- ssss11 5y agoThey understand technical topics well, what’s required to implement them and what the risks and rough timeframes are to achieve them. On top of regular project manager knowledge.
- elpakal 5y agoSo TPM = PM + T where T is a deeper understanding of a topic… Which makes you better at general PM things? Tangentially - how common is it for a TPM to write code?
- ssss11 5y agoThere is probably many definitions but that’s my opinion. E.g. a TPM with a data centre project should know about data centre physical security, aisles, enclosures, peering, power, cooling etc. I think they should “know about” the technical things but no, not do the technical work - so I wouldn’t expect a TPM to write any code.