Thursday, September 20, 2012

"PM"s
by Ron Lichty


I am repeatedly in conversations with someone who says, "Oh, PMs blah blah blah." 

And I have to figure out which kind of PM they're talking about. 

(It happened again yesterday afternoon. The person speaking was a product manager, which made it likely that the "PMs" to which he referred were other product managers, not project managers. Then this morning, I got an email with the subject line,  "The Evolving PM". Again I had to think. The sender was a project management association, making it likely that the "PMs" to which it referred were other project managers, not product managers.)

I'm not a PM. I'm not a PM of any kind. I'm not a Project Manager, I'm not a Product Manager, I'm not a Program Manager, I'm not a Publication Manager (engagement last year: Stanford subsidiary HighWire, which hosts web sites for 1400 of the world's most prestigious academic and scholarly journals from 150 publishers worldwide, and when I arrived, had 14 "PMs" for me to manage - who were account managers!).

I'm an interim VP Engineering. And a consulting CTO. And an Agile trainer and coach of Agile transformations. And an author of the Addison Wesley book (just released today!):
   Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams 
   www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net  

The common abbreviation terminology I've been pushing for, in my engagements:
PjM == Project Manager
PdM == Product Manager
PgM == Program Manager
They're all self-clarifying.

I give talks on Transforming Chaos to Clarity.

Project Managers and Product Managers and Program Managers are, to a one, charged with clarifying software development, not adding to the chaos.

"PM" adds to the chaos. 

I wish that were…

'nuff said.

1 Comments:

At 7:43 PM, September 23, 2012, Blogger nasri said...

Hi

Tks very much for post:

I like it and hope that you continue posting.

Let me show other source that may be good for community.

Source: Product manager interview questions

Best rgs
David

 

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