I am repeatedly in conversations
with someone who says, "Oh, PMs blah blah blah."
And I have to figure out which
kind of PM they're talking about.
(It happened again yesterday
afternoon. The person speaking was a product manager, which made it likely that
the "PMs" to which he referred were other product managers, not project
managers. Then this morning, I got an email with the subject line, "The
Evolving PM". Again I had to think. The sender was a project management
association, making it likely that the "PMs" to which it referred were other
project managers, not product managers.)
I'm not a PM. I'm not a PM of any
kind. I'm not a Project Manager, I'm not a Product Manager, I'm not a Program
Manager, I'm not a Publication Manager (engagement last year: Stanford
subsidiary HighWire, which hosts web sites for 1400 of the world's most
prestigious academic and scholarly journals from 150 publishers worldwide, and
when I arrived, had 14 "PMs" for me to manage - who were account
managers!).
I'm an interim VP Engineering.
And a consulting CTO. And an Agile trainer and coach of Agile transformations.
And an author of the Addison Wesley book (just published!):
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams
www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net
The common abbreviation
terminology I've been pushing for, in my engagements:
PjM
== Project Manager
PdM
== Product Manager
PgM
== Program Manager
They're all
self-clarifying.
I give talks on Transforming
Chaos to Clarity.
Project Managers and Product
Managers and Program Managers are, to a one, charged with clarifying software
development, not adding to the chaos.
"PM" adds to the chaos.
I wish that were…
'nuff said.
__________________________________________________________________
Ron Lichty is the co-author of Managing the Unmanageable, and blogs at ronlichty.blogspot.com, where this post originally appeared. Check out his web site at www.ronlichty.com.
