"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.