The Premise
Why did you decide to become a project manager? This is a common question I get during job interviews. The short answer I provide is that, at the time, I got bored of being a software developer within a sole business unit and I was looking for a role that involved working with cross functional teams on different domains.
This answer is 100% true but there were other factors that made me shift roles. One in particular was a hall conversation with an executive at a large organization I used to work for. Everyday I would see him closely working with the infrastructure teams, so I presumed he knew the nuances around the stack those teams were working with. For this reason, I ended up asking him a specific technical question and he said: “The team can certainly answer that, I am here to make things happen”.
He was the program manager for all infrastructure teams. He knew confidently what each individual in the team was capable of. He could interact with them on daily basis and easily understand what was happening, but each team had their specific domain knowledge. They were the SMEs— Subject Matter Experts — applying their skills to meet goals, deadlines and improve customer experience.
After this answer, the executive was kind enough to share his professional background with me. Most of his work experience was linked to operations, sales and finance. At that moment I realized the boredom I felt for being advocated to solely one domain could be solved by shifting towards a role like that.
I’ve been focusing my career and improving my skills towards being a better project manager for last 10 years. I can confidently say our role, tools and necessary knowledge varies per organization, team, project and domain. But one skill that is always needed is the capability to interpret and translate lingo across domains of expertise.
That skill needs to be nurtured frequently to stay up to date with changes in technology, processes and roles within different domains. This blog is my effort to continue fostering this curiosity around learning new things to be a better industry agnostic project manager.
Stay tuned for the up coming posts and essays around industry and domains that, more often than not, need a good project manager to meet goals, objectives and deliver high products and services.
Cheers,
The Agnostic Project Manager.
