Quality of IT Project Managers

[bobhope]

The Peter Priciple explains why there are so many crap project managers

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

I thought that had been replaced by the dilbert principle: i.e. "promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage that they're capable of doing."

[XLMonkey]

A good mix of responses in here and I'm reassured by some of these!

It's clear now from the posts that some of the project managers I've been working with were just in it for the meetings, tea and jammie dodgers!

Yup, I resemble that remark. Been cadging cuppas and bisuits in a shiny suit for longer than I can remember.

There's a real issue about professionalism in project management (and, to an extent, in the IT industry as a whole). In other specialism (e.g. engineering, construction), there's an established set of professional qualifications and practical experience that you have to have in order to be called a project manager. In IT, almost any fool can call themself a project manager - and they usually do.

However, I don't think that the problem is going to go away very easily - it has to be driven by the clients themselves demanding higher standards of professionalism (and refusing to employ people who don't meet them).