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It's not the Profession of "Project manager" that I despise, it's power-hungry incompetent arse-mops who seem to gravitate towards it en-mass that get my goat.

Now, the title I've used sounds like I've made it up from "management bollocks" but it is genuinely something that I received a few weeks ago. According to the accompanying e-mail it was a questionaire designed to create "empowered project managers".

The questionaire asked questions (that phrase is perfect.. I think I'll use it again) about whether certain individuals were capable of working with complex personalities, and essentially was trying to find out if they could hide their inabilities with different "project management techniques". It was repugnant.

The Role of project manger is to be a set of walls, doors and fences. They are simply there to organise and guide the people who are the specialists *without* trying some transparent pseudo group-psychology bullshit.

We have one here who epitomises the stereotype. We'd had a great meeting with the MD and top designers of a company not so long ago. Me and another of our top designers were there, bouncing ideas around and have a right laugh. Massive progress and a crucible of geeky engineering creation... and as we draw to an end Project Manager pipes up "Well, we'd like to thank you for your can-do attitude and positive way of thinking. It's clear that you have drive and passion for the project..... etc.

I don't how her misguided diatribe continued, because my attention was taken by the Managing director/chief engineer of this company - caught in the onslaught of shallow self-importance - both simultaniously face-palming.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Tue 1 Jun 2010, 14:44, 1 reply)

out of interest, were they waterfall or agile PMs?

( zulu eh?, Tue 1 Jun 2010, 16:15, closed)