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Someone's gotta own the roadmap and prioritize the work queue, be it at a project level or updating the Microsoft project plan or the sprint. There's always a m

Someone's gotta own the roadmap and prioritize the work queue, be it at a project level or updating the Microsoft project plan or the sprint. There's always a multitude of stakeholders. Devs, sales, marketing, ops, all have needs and idea. Someone must be the arbiter. I operate as principle on a project, and I have opinions, but I cannot set the roadmap alone

sanderjd 3y ago
If all you want is someone to do team-level project management toil, a line manager can do that (or hire them a part time assistant if they don't want to and you don't want to invest in better automation). This is not a whole career-level job.
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  I get the feeling you don't work on massively complex projects. We have loads of project managers where I work and I thank my stars we have every one of them. The coordination and planning required is ferocious for the work we need to deliver. It is not trivial and it would quickly fall apart without them.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Some of what you described in the comment I replied to fits the description of complicated company-spanning project management - a valuable role I have typically seen referred to as "program management" - but some of it, the team level dealing-with-task-backlogs type stuff, are things that managers and team members can just do in the course of their work. But you're right that my comment focused only on the latter thing and ignored the former one. But setting that aside, there is certainly a personality thing at play here. If I worked where you work, I would probably be more skeptical of the value of all the time being put into project management, and if you worked at my favorite companies that I've worked at, you would probably feel like it's a poorly managed mess (I've had lots of coworkers who felt that way!). To some extent different folks just like different strokes, and that's one of the things that makes it really hard to do things that require lots of people to pull in the same direction.
    - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
      There is certainly a distinction between teams just dealing with their task backlog and project management. I wouldn't waste a project manager on that. Program management is a level above project management as you say, coordinating multiple projects. But there is definitely a space for complex single projects (not programs) that still require detailed planning and coordination. It's not really about personal preference though, unless this issue is a show stopper for you in terms of where you work. I've worked in both informal and formal settings. I personally dislike heavyweight project management processes but they are sometimes required!
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        Yeah I was thinking last night that my comments here were a lot more strident about this than I am in real life. I agree with your whole comment, except I think the middle ground between team-level management and program management is more often better served by tooling, architecture, requirements, or team structure changes rather than project management. (I get it, sometimes the need for a lot of planning is imposed from the top, like if you sign a contract with an immovable delivery date, but I think most organizations should do whatever they can to avoid doing that, in order to enable them to structure projects flexibly and have small mostly-autonomous teams.) I think the personality thing is important both in terms of contentment with your work (and thus which organizations and projects you choose) and in terms of how you analyze the relative value of things when evaluating trade-offs between the different things an organization can invest its time and resources on.
        MattPalmer1086 3y ago
        In our case we are a heavily regulated industry and the level of coordination, governance and compliance that is required to make change is shocking! I agree that it's good if it's possible to avoid all that and still deliver what you need to! Also agree that many people simply can't stand working in really heavyweight environments. While I dont love it, I can live with it.
tennis_80 3y ago
Eh, in my current role (engineer) we have a PM but they’re not all that useful. In theory, they do what you describe, but because they don’t have a technical background they struggle to identify blockers & engineers drive most prioritisation sessions. They may jump in occasionally to tell us another team needs X or the business wants to see more Y so we should re-think what we work on next, but I struggle to see why that couldn’t be handled by our technical team lead.

sanderjd 3y ago

If all you want is someone to do team-level project management toil, a line manager can do that (or hire them a part time assistant if they don't want to and you don't want to invest in better automation). This is not a whole career-level job.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago
I get the feeling you don't work on massively complex projects. We have loads of project managers where I work and I thank my stars we have every one of them. The coordination and planning required is ferocious for the work we need to deliver. It is not trivial and it would quickly fall apart without them.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Some of what you described in the comment I replied to fits the description of complicated company-spanning project management - a valuable role I have typically seen referred to as "program management" - but some of it, the team level dealing-with-task-backlogs type stuff, are things that managers and team members can just do in the course of their work. But you're right that my comment focused only on the latter thing and ignored the former one. But setting that aside, there is certainly a personality thing at play here. If I worked where you work, I would probably be more skeptical of the value of all the time being put into project management, and if you worked at my favorite companies that I've worked at, you would probably feel like it's a poorly managed mess (I've had lots of coworkers who felt that way!). To some extent different folks just like different strokes, and that's one of the things that makes it really hard to do things that require lots of people to pull in the same direction.
  - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
    There is certainly a distinction between teams just dealing with their task backlog and project management. I wouldn't waste a project manager on that. Program management is a level above project management as you say, coordinating multiple projects. But there is definitely a space for complex single projects (not programs) that still require detailed planning and coordination. It's not really about personal preference though, unless this issue is a show stopper for you in terms of where you work. I've worked in both informal and formal settings. I personally dislike heavyweight project management processes but they are sometimes required!
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      Yeah I was thinking last night that my comments here were a lot more strident about this than I am in real life. I agree with your whole comment, except I think the middle ground between team-level management and program management is more often better served by tooling, architecture, requirements, or team structure changes rather than project management. (I get it, sometimes the need for a lot of planning is imposed from the top, like if you sign a contract with an immovable delivery date, but I think most organizations should do whatever they can to avoid doing that, in order to enable them to structure projects flexibly and have small mostly-autonomous teams.) I think the personality thing is important both in terms of contentment with your work (and thus which organizations and projects you choose) and in terms of how you analyze the relative value of things when evaluating trade-offs between the different things an organization can invest its time and resources on.
      - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
        In our case we are a heavily regulated industry and the level of coordination, governance and compliance that is required to make change is shocking! I agree that it's good if it's possible to avoid all that and still deliver what you need to! Also agree that many people simply can't stand working in really heavyweight environments. While I dont love it, I can live with it.

tennis_80 3y ago

Eh, in my current role (engineer) we have a PM but they’re not all that useful. In theory, they do what you describe, but because they don’t have a technical background they struggle to identify blockers & engineers drive most prioritisation sessions. They may jump in occasionally to tell us another team needs X or the business wants to see more Y so we should re-think what we work on next, but I struggle to see why that couldn’t be handled by our technical team lead.