I know there are a lot of PMs on here and perhaps some managers involved in IT.
I know that project management is really important.
Yet some times dealing with non techy people in IT just makes me wonder. Most of them seem to be doing things that require few proper skills. Or rather they require skills but just the kind of common personality sense stuff that you either have or you don't - ability to talk to people, organise stuff, talk in meetings, send emails.
Like there was this one bloke I dealt with a short while ago and he was reviewing some of the work and preparing a document on alternative options. Thing is it was completely obvious technically that there were no real alternatives and we'd have to continue on the same path. Weird. He spent ages doing that and with just a bit of knowledge he would have known it was pointless. I had to keep having phone calls where he'd waste my time and I'd politely try to explain things to him.
Or the ten people that come to meetings to discuss something I'm involved with and eight of them are non-technical and bring to the table such skills as 'making jokes with the project stakeholders', 'sending out the outlook calendar invite', 'wearing a suit', 'showing a series of arbitrary statistics on a powerpoint slide with no understanding of how valid or invalid they are'.
Thing is these jobs seem to pay well and are well regarded.
Did we make a wrong turn? All the technical skill that takes years to develop and have to be constantly renewed is it worth it? I can wear a suit, arrange meetings, make jokes, be chummy.
I know that project management is really important.
Yet some times dealing with non techy people in IT just makes me wonder. Most of them seem to be doing things that require few proper skills. Or rather they require skills but just the kind of common personality sense stuff that you either have or you don't - ability to talk to people, organise stuff, talk in meetings, send emails.
Like there was this one bloke I dealt with a short while ago and he was reviewing some of the work and preparing a document on alternative options. Thing is it was completely obvious technically that there were no real alternatives and we'd have to continue on the same path. Weird. He spent ages doing that and with just a bit of knowledge he would have known it was pointless. I had to keep having phone calls where he'd waste my time and I'd politely try to explain things to him.
Or the ten people that come to meetings to discuss something I'm involved with and eight of them are non-technical and bring to the table such skills as 'making jokes with the project stakeholders', 'sending out the outlook calendar invite', 'wearing a suit', 'showing a series of arbitrary statistics on a powerpoint slide with no understanding of how valid or invalid they are'.
Thing is these jobs seem to pay well and are well regarded.
Did we make a wrong turn? All the technical skill that takes years to develop and have to be constantly renewed is it worth it? I can wear a suit, arrange meetings, make jokes, be chummy.
Comment