How much technical knowledge should a project manager have?
Posted by Thegoodlife93@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 1 comments
I know there are a lot of PMs who don't have software development experience and don't come from a technical background, and maybe that's okay. But I'm curious, in your experience, how much can a PM with almost no technical knowledge contribute?
My team has a PM who is a nice guy, but I consistently get the impression that he never understands any project or task except at the very highest level. I know he has a lot of projects on his plate, probably more than he should, but it seems like he has to be spoonfed tasks and next steps by the technical people. His main contribution to the team seems to be asking who needs to be included in the next meeting and then scheduling it (which something I actually do appreciate. I don't want to have to do that myself).
Yesterday we were in a meeting where I and some other devs were discussing a process that ultimately just creates JSON files that are then ingested by another process. About halfway through the meeting our PM asks what JSON is, and I was just a little baffled. That just seems like a such a basic thing to know if you're working in tech. Am I being too harsh? What does a good PM know and do, in your opinion?
my1795@reddit
If I am a PM, then for me to contribute effectively, I would personally want to ensure that I know as much about the domain as possible, and be honest with team members that I am not from a dev background, but be curious to know things. I may not know hands on coding/syntax etc but if I am managing a software project, then as a PM, I need to be seen as a trusted orchestrator -- and for that I need to know at high level how different modules of the system - front end, backend, DB interact with each other so that I can be the person who leads the conversation with the "first good question". I don't need to get into the technical trenches; for that part, I will collaborate with the Engineering Manager/Architect, but I will ensure my technical vocabulary is strong enough to understand trade-offs and have the ability to tie that up with the overall roadmap to understand where we are headed.
All this is combined with the usual PM skill sets.