Rise of the technical PM

As a project manager you are an ultimate generalist. As project managers we have to get up to speed very quickly with the project we are responsible for delivering. More importantly is being able to understand and be able to communicate effectively to all levels of stakeholders and team members both technical and non technical. No one can know everything and that is why teamwork is such a beautiful thing, but having a solid understanding of IT and software devlepment can give you and our clients an edge. So when is it beneficial to have technical knowledge especially in the field of IT project management..?

During university and when I entered the workforce a friend of mine taught me just enough Python to create a web crawler. I then dove head first into web development, building custom WordPress sites with PHP, CSS, HTML and JavaScript which built up my fundamental knowledge of how the web works. It hasn’t stopped there either, well into my career as a project manager I have been continually learning, fascinated with the Microsoft tech stack. I am continually pushing myself to quench my curiosity of technical understanding and my brother who is an exceptional software developer and Solution Architect continues to mentor me. Even this very blog post I am using Devops practices by branching my code from my main branch to write this post offline, then I’ll commit my changes and create a Pull Request to merge my changes back into Main.

Having at least a good foundational technical understanding of how software applications are built in my opinion better enable project managers to deliver successful projects. I am an IT Project Manager but if you asked me to run a Construction Project I would most likely spend more time getting up to speed than implementing the project🤣 So what are the benefits of having a technical PM?

The Benefits of a Technical Project Manager

Having some technical knowledge enables an IT project manager: