"I'm a Technical Project Manager"

People sometimes ask, as people do after they see my evil Fiat Punto (which is actually poisonous!!) "Mate what do you do for a living then?"

There are a selection of things i reply with:

There are the, what i like to refer to as the 'well thought out answers:

- "I eat".
- "I sleep".
- "Through a special manafacturing process, I turn children into wine glasses".
- "I work at a wildlife sanctuary with colourful hungry hippos".
- "I'm Tony the Tiger's PA".

and then the other answers:
- "I'm a Technical Project Manager"
- "I look after IT projects"
- "I manage IT Projects".

The first set of responses never lead to anything else. The second set of responses often lead to a quizzical (if its not a fellow IT brethren) "oh right?". At which point i say:

"See me as the conductor in the orchestra, there are lots of instruments that need to be played, but not at the same time, they have to be played at the right time, so that everything sounds beautiful. If they are played at the wrong times, it doesn't sound that great, even terrible. If the saxophonist doesn't get to do his solo....well....that's just totally uncool. So my job is to bring everyone in, all instruments at the right time. Not instruments - But different pieces of technology which come together to solve a business problem.

What do you say? I'd love to hear if you have any good lines.

Technical Project Manager Ingredients - Assertive

Some people think of been assertive as having to shout. As a TPM and...well...as anything else...YOU DONT NEED TO SHOUT to be assertive.

What is been assertive? Its NOT been agressive. If you want to be agressive...be a cage fighter or something...or be a celebrity....take lots of drugs...and when the paps come for you....fight them....then you'll appear on the 'Most Agressive Celebrity' show....

...anyways..i digress.

Assertiveness for a TPM. Here we go....

Assertiveness in simple terms is saying what you need or want. But its double sided too. Its protecting yourself from what you dont need or want. Along with that is respecting the rights of other people or groups.

And that is where the skill is needed.

A few tips -
-Use open ended questions. Dont be fobbed off.
-Work out responses to agression. But not with agression.Practice saying "I'm not sure about that.
-Have faith in your own abilities.
-State clearly your means and aims.("As discussed, I will be rolling Office 2007 out to all your PCs on the week commencing the 24th of September.)(I believe i've been missunderstood. The PID is quite clear in showing that laptops are not in scope.)

Remember, just be straight and clear. Leave the agression out. Not needed. It will just make you look like a bully. If you arent getting your point across, escalate.

The BBC have a really good article on Assertiveness - check it out here -

Technical Project Manager Ingredients - Good Negotiator

You gotta know how to talk....and achieve the 'WW' - The 'Win Win' Situation. As a TPM sometimes you will want/need to do things that the rest of the business WILL DEFINITELY NOT WANT TO DO.

Example:

You have a legacy system that acts as an interface between hand held devices out in the field and the back end corporate SAP system. Absolutely business critical.

The system is hemorhaging money because of old hardware support costs.

You've been commisioned to get the system upgraded.

Downtime is necessary.

You want to do this at night.

The system owner doesnt want to. He wants to do it early in the morning.

You dont want to do it early in the morning because of the lack of support people available.

What are you going to do? You need a win win situation.

You could make arrangements for the weekend. Perhaps on Saturday - in the day time and you could arrange for support people to be available at the weekend. That could work.


You need to negotiate to resolve disputes, to come to agreements. You dont want to be lead by the customer....At the same time too, you do need to consider the customer's environment. It makes no sense forcing techy issues on business minded people with out considering their thoughts. IT JUST WONT WORK. I know i've been there!!! (YOU WILL HAVE THIS NEW ENCRYPTION SOFTWARE - SO THERE!)