Who will do the technical work of the project? Is it the Project Manager?

In this episode, Ricardo talks about a question that is one of the most frequent in the project area: Must the project manager have technical knowledge regarding the project product? An engineering project, for example, must necessarily be managed by an engineer?

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes BM Podcast. Do they like to discuss with you the same time clinical aspects of the project management? A lot of people misunderstand and the role of the project manager. They think that, okay, I'm building a house. So I need the project manager that is an engineered that could be responsible for the technical work. If I have a software development, I need to have a developer as a project manager.

And I would like to challenge disconcert. I do would like you to think in a slightly different way first, I'm not sure that you don't need at technical knowledge to the liver. The project, of course, if you are building a house, you need someone to be responsible for the technical aspect. But what I'm telling you, its that it's not necessarily that this person, that he or she should be the project manager, because one of the main aspects of the work work of a project manager is the ability to lead a team to deliver the results is the ability to handle conflict, to manage risks and to make people work together.

I love to use the example of the coach. The coach is not a player and to be a coach is not required that you B you had a previous, a successful experience as a player. So it's very, very important that we'll, and this is a great coach, like a great product manager is someone that knows where the ability and the technical aspects should be in place.

I had Manager many projects, the work I'm doing right now in development. I didn't have an experience in development, but because I have the experience of managing projects I could adapt and that could surround myself from a very good technical people, of course, to win the game. You need to have great players too, win the game to Butte, a house. Of course, you need to have a very good engineer, but not necessarily that this engineered that he or she should be the managing the project.

It's a different set of competencies. And a lot of people think, okay, I need just to focus on the technical side. Many times I saw projects failing exactly because of that, because people give all priority to the technicals aspects and the, just forget the stakeholder management, the risk management, the communications plan, and then you have a great technical aspects of a failing Project because the deliveries, more than that, it's more, it's a motivation, it's a leadership.

So you need to understand this. And this is very, very important because when I see advertisements for a project manager, they mix up all this aspects and they are trying to find someone that is

Speaker 1 (3m 20s): Perfect and perfection doesn't exist

Speaker 0 (3m 23s): In the real word. If you find a great technician, he we're not necessarily finding a great Project medic. And if you have to adapt for the project manager positions, I would suggest to you to think about this leadership does is the ability to integrate the teams and surround this person

Speaker 1 (3m 44s): Extremely competent technical knowhow

Speaker 0 (3m 47s): College to deliver the work. Remember the project manager, he's not the person is in the work. The project manager is the person that integrates the work of other people. We need to understand this many people, but only technical people to lead the project. And they lead the, the project to failure. Think very strongly about that this week and see you next week with another five minutes PM.

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Who will do the technical work of the project? Is it the Project Manager?

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