13
The Project Management role grew from needs to coordinate in the traditional environments. If the title sticks around, the role still has to change. I've seen PMs take on higher level coordination, become a PO, become a SM or design a new role altogether. This is all depending on your organization, quality of agile adoption and access to coaching. If not ...
11
Once you become a real Scrum Master, you shift your career focus from development to people management. Most of the organisations don't fully understand the role of the Scrum Master, and they function as a Technical Lead, so there is still place for doing development time to time in this scenario.
The real Scrum Master has hardly any time to do development. ...
8
The It depends pretty much answers all of your questions because they really depend on the context.
My first advice is to change your questions by adding the why do I to the beginning. For example, "Why do I want to have one meeting per week?" Because I have to write a report once a week to my boss? Or, because I would like to know about the daily life of ...
7
I think the different levels can relate to the Agile Onion as described by Simon Powers.
Entry level: Can implement the tools and processes, but doesnt have a good understanding why the processes, practises, principles and value's exist. Could lead to cargo-cult Agile.
Intermediate: Can work on a team level, but does not yet have the experience to change ...
6
It will be very hard to break into Project Management "cold" - You will definitely need enough experience in the field/sector you are applying for to be able to talk credibly about it and this can only take time and experience.
One way in might be to begin working in a PMO (Project Managment Office) perhaps as a PMO administrator- That way you can learn the ...
5
Probably not. The main job of a PM is to drive all the stakeholders in the same direction, which is sometimes more diplomacy and communication than actually project organisation.
Scrum is a methodology to deliver product in accordance with requirements. However, a project is usually not limited to simply delivery a product, it may involve business, ...
5
The answers to those questions depend heavily on your company/institution/hierarchy. I think we can only respond in the context of PMI (although I'd love to hear from a PRINCE practitioner or other non-PMI organization).
Work performed as a project coordinator almost certainly qualifies as job experience towards PMP certification (I'm only hedging because ...
5
I would be wary about giving an absolute answer to this because the meaning of a job title can vary hugely from organisation to organisation and sector to sector. In my own sector - digital/software development - I would say that Project Coordinators normally report in to Project Managers who may, in turn, report in to Programme Managers.
In my experience ...
5
Job titles mean whatever an organization wants them to mean. However, in my experience a Product Owner (or, in less agile environments, a Product Manager) is often responsible for a single product or a closely-related suite of products.
Advancement within Product Management is generally into managing a portfolio of products. In some companies, a Product ...
5
This is always going to be a subjective measure because it is not a binary decision-it is not like an exam that you have either passed or not.
Having said that, in most situations I have come across it is decided through defined (and somewhat arbitrary) combinations of:
years of experience in Project Management
experience with different team sizes (i.e. ...
5
In my organization many PMs get very little say in Human Resources decisions for their projects. The functional manager says who they can spare that fits the criteria and that is who the project manager gets. This said I don't think there is anyone who doubts our PMs are in fact PMs. I think the same holds true for costs. If you are managing projects you ...
4
Bluntly the relationship between the project coordinator function and that of project manager is similar to that between a secretary. The secretary has an excellent grasp on the day to day activities of the task, but has never taken responsibility for delivery.
This does not mean that the project coordinator cannot make the step to being a project manager, ...
4
Determining management effectiveness is more difficult and time consuming than determining entry-level developer effectiveness.
In my experience, accountability in project scope and duration and the requirement of leadership are key differentiators between the roles. Junior managers tend to get lower salaries because proving anything about their ...
4
Simple answer: If your client asks you to do something, you're not a consultant. If they ask you what they should do, you're a consultant.
4
In one post, you managed to exhibit simultaneously what you SHOULD do and what you SHOULD NOT do. You are asking all the right questions and there are a ton more you need to ask. And each question should spawn into several more. What you SHOULD NOT do is expect a definitive answer as there is no such thing. Zsolt has it right: it depends.
Ask the ...
4
Wow, huge question!
Let's talk about:
Capabilities: Personal skills and knowledge
Talent: How much effort is necessary to be good at something?
Potential: The end of development within a specific domain
To identify the next good PM you need to:
Identify the required capabilities within your company. I would prioritise leadership and communications like ...
4
You can be a Scrum Master, but without any experience in Agile, you will not be effective. The training itself is two days, and does not cover most of the extreme cases you'll meet day to day.
If you would like to be a good Scrum Master, be part of a team that actually is agile, and learn form its Scrum Master. If you would like to land a good job, do the ...
3
I agree with Valeuf; in our organisation the 'scrummaster' role is taken up by the team-leads. But this is only for more maintenance/support/ small changes kind of work (and they are often working more in a Kanban style)
However, the larger projects often have multiple scrumteams working in parallel, so there remains a lot of project setup work, ...
3
TL;DR
If you want to be relevant in the agile world, update your skills. If you want to stay with traditional methodologies, target the right job sectors.
Project Management in the Market
Does it mean that the project manager job eventually will disappear?
Not in the foreseeable future. Project management as a career will be around as long as there are ...
3
You can always call yourself consultant, because the definition of a consultant is not that strict:
A person who provides expert advice professionally.
You are person (check), you are an expert, therefore you can give expert advices (check), and you'll plan to earn your living from doing it - you are a professional - (check). Due to the nature of the job - ...
3
Leigh,
As a manager at a large fortune 500 company and having experience hiring and managing project managers, I think you might be trying to do too much. Keep in mind that anyone looking for a PM right now is probably going to have a stack of resumes from qualified candidates and will automatically weed out those without a PPM certification or the proper ...
3
You should expect to remain employed with a start up or a 100-year-old company for 1) only as long as you're needed, either your role or your capability set; 2) only as long as they can afford you; or 3) only as long as the company remains a company.
What you are really asking for is a risk assessment. Start ups have higher risks all the way around; that'...
3
There are a ton of skills that transfer but I think the most valuable asset you have are the years experience of service. Consulting firms that do public sector work, especially DOD and military, hire guys like you all the time. You need to settle around DC to reduce chance of travel. In today's dollars, you could likely expect $100k to maybe as high as $...
3
Here's the problem for organizations and predicting future job success:
What are the attributes and work behaviors consistent with a particular job role's success?
How do you observe or test for those attributes and work behaviors that produce both RELIABLE and VALID results, minimizing biases?
How do you pay for this?
For a job role, if you try to do ...
3
My background is similar, so I'll tell you my lessons learned.
To get started, let people know you are interested in the PM role, and that you would like to work as a project admin or coordinator to get some experience. These are roles where you get to see a lot of the management activities but for the most part you don't have a lot of responsibility for ...
3
In our organization, junior SMs facilitate the cadence of the project. They make sure the meetings happen, make sure the right people are there, help the team members self organize, and also track things like story point burndown, etc. They provide summaries of team work at internal sprint reviews, and bring up issues the team has to management. As with the ...
3
Obviously it is possible that a PM for a particularly prestigious product would command a higher salary. However, past that, salary differences are often more about where you work and your experience than the type of project. It's useful to remember that there are some companies that are only able to offer the services they do because of very strong internal ...
2
In my opinion percentage has some extra risk:
Money always is motivating factor. If it isn't so important in current moment but who knows about future? Wife will become pregnant, somebody will get married, child will fall sick and so on.
If something goes in not right way it will be huge chance to lose entire team. Because leaving the company will be able ...
2
In a company without project coordinators, everything you name is part of the project manager role. So, I would say that project coordination is a step on the road to project management. If you have both project coordinators and project managers, then it would seem that project coordinators are, in a sense, assistant project managers. If you only have ...
2
I would say that, rather than being about the job title, it's all about the skills you display, use day-to-day etc etc.
A lot of PM roles are very heavy on coordination, some focus on leadership etc..it all varies by organisation and industry.
I would say that a project coordinator is not yet a PM (not ultimately responsible for delivery), but it's on the ...
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