In the previous article, “Honeymoon Manager: How to Use It,” we talked about how an appointment takes place for a manager and what a new manager can do during his first months in office. Let's continue to understand this topic.

How to build a career project manager?

Is it necessary to grow from a technical specialist or purposefully, from scratch to study as a manager? Will I be able to manage the team, not knowing how to perform the tasks that I give my employees? What awaits me in 3-5-7 years? What to do now, to get closer to your own dream (and what is it at all - the career dream of a project manager)?

I have been involved in project management for more than 10 years, and I often hear such questions (yes, I ask them to myself). The only right answers, of course, does not exist, but I can share my own thoughts.
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I myself have long come to the conclusion that neither the personnel specialists, nor those involved in prof. orientation, there are no answers to these or more specific questions. For example, "Can a project manager move from IT to, say, construction?"

We know there are examples. However, when and why such transitions are successful - we find it difficult to answer.

Often, employers are not limited to the vacancy requirements for project management and overall experience, but necessarily require relevant experience (for example, 5 years in managing website development or ERP implementation, etc.). Managers themselves are also trying to build a career with such an eye in order to develop in the most attractive area. But it is at the level of intuition. Is it possible to bring under it any rules?

My answer: you can. And not the most obvious.

I will try to speculate on the career of a project manager: what it is and how it changes depending on the type of companies that fate can bring. A significant place in my reasoning will be taken by the classification from Henry Mintzberg, which I will discuss in more detail below.

What is the difference between “good” project managers?

To talk about the career of a manager, let me offer at least some understanding of the essence of his work and the criteria for its effectiveness.
In fact, when we talk about a software developer, everything (at first glance) is much clearer. A good developer differs from a bad one even if it creates a better product in a shorter period of time (in the broadest sense, compliance with requirements or expectations, stability and scalability of the product architecture, etc.). I do not want to create serious disputes, I’ll just note that the developer makes the product (software), he does it not for himself, which means you can always check how high-quality and fast the result is.

The manager is a little more complicated. He is engaged in something that is much more difficult to measure, and the result always depends not on him alone. He himself, as a rule, does not produce anything material (except for Gantt charts or stickers on the Kanban board, and any acts of acceptance and transmission, if such are necessary on the project). Therefore, the task “to distinguish a bad manager from a good one” is by no means simple (while the answer is crucial for any careerist — what does he want, what should he show to the employer, what qualities and skills should he develop to rely on outstanding professional growth)?

Surely you already have simple answers.

For example: “a good manager closes projects on time and on budget”, or “a good manager has a satisfied customer” or “a good manager closes projects with fewer deviations than colleagues”, or “a good manager is a leader”, etc. Again, I will not argue. Let me just say that in my experience there are two principles that all these simple answers negate a little. The first is “who is lucky, and they are going on that one” (that is, if the manager should prove himself, as more complex projects, risky tasks begin to be entrusted to him, he shoots particularly difficult clients, etc., and as a result his project completion indicators “subside ", Compared with colleagues, although everyone in the company remembers - Egor works on incredibly difficult tasks, he is cool). On the other hand, project management is always a lot of communication and sometimes a bit of policy, and therefore the use of difficult to measure indicators (such as a project manager - “leader”) leads to taste, and those who speak louder and more concisely and also builds relationships better, and more with management than with the team.

Here I will suggest a little philosophizing. Let's take a step back and try to take a look at the whole profession of a project manager as a whole, and only then return to the criteria that separates the “bad” from the “good”.

Why do you need the profession of a project manager?

About project management as a profession started talking relatively recently. Moreover, other types of managers (directors, presidents, commanders, etc.) exist and solve complex tasks quite successfully. No project managers built the first pyramids. The construction of the first naval armada, the creation of the first trade routes through the floor of the world was carried out by much more traditional managers and not in democratic design teams.

So what's the point? Why invent another profession? Indeed, by now, in many areas, a long-running control system has developed.

It turns out not everywhere. The starting point for project management is precisely in the fact that there are industries where specialists are not able to systematically achieve a good result.

Where do we hear about projects more often today?
- information technology (IT in the widest sense)
- building
- business development
- media activities (yes, the TV project “Dom-2” and others like him)
- somewhere in academia
- etc.

It is here that the usual forms of management can not allow one IT firm to compete confidently with another. For some reason, the first version of the software product comes out on time, even if it is damp, and the second one is developed shakily, not really, it disappoints the user and allows competitors to get ahead. Building a house gets stuck in the endless twists and turns of approvals and the unreliability of contractors, while every day the idle tower crane turns into thousands of losses.

Do these spheres have something in common - a relatively young IT, a much more adult “media” and absolutely ancient in their origin of science and construction? At least what Henry Mintzberg called the "external environment" for the company. In both cases, it, this environment, is in modern conditions - “complex” and “dynamic”. “Complicated” means the company itself, with all the resources at its disposal, interprets its tasks as hard, difficult to comprehend, difficult to explain. “Dynamic” means that we constantly have to respond to fundamentally new customer requests, master new technologies, take into account other dramatic technological and not only innovations. On the theory Mintzberg, we still say.

Fix a thesis.
Project management is a reaction to the inability to systematically achieve a positive result.

By the way, this is why reports like “Chaos report”, saying that at least one third of all projects in IT fail, reflect the cause, not the effect. The point is not that project managers are completely and completely armless gadgets, but that it is these managers who take on the most difficult challenges in modern management. Paraphrasing Churchill about democracy at ease, "project management is not very effective, but mankind could not think of anything better now."

What will the project manager give us?

So, the external environment is too complicated and is changing rapidly so that a firm (company, state institution) can effectively manage its work. And we start experimenting. For example, we call the project manager and entrust the achievement of the result to him. Approximately, as a patient who went through all the traditional approaches entrusted himself to an experimental method of treatment.

Here it is very important to determine whether the patient is in the hands of an eloquent quack. Again, we are approaching the question "how to distinguish a good manager from a bad one."

Turning to a doctor, most of us do not expect abstruse diagnoses or long prescriptions. We, first of all, want to stop coughing (and, if we believed that we could handle it ourselves, we would not have addressed the doctor at all).

So what is really waiting for the project manager? Why invite him to the "projects"? Certainly not for the sake of storytelling and the introduction of project methodologies, drawn Gantt charts, or sticky stickers on Kanban board, not for charisma and eloquence.
The manager's employer hopes that in his hands the business will go "better" than before. In some projects it is more important to get into the budget, in others - into the budget and on time, in the third - in the first place - the user's feelings. Anyway, any employer can formulate what he wants in practice.

Let's reduce it to universal terms: "efficiency" and "competitiveness".

With the advent of the manager on significant parameters, the work of the team as a whole should improve (efficiency) and at the same time be at an adequate level compared to peers and rivals (competitiveness).

Nobody likes project management "for beautiful eyes." Business and other structures are only interested in the growth of efficiency and competitiveness. In the field of IT there are many companies that manage their work on the principles approved in the 70s, and these are strong players. They have their own specifics, they do not need any project management (and do not even think to suggest). In the same construction, there is an alternative approach to project management (creating not teams, but strictly regulated and interacting according to the templates of “services” or “managements”), which has the right to life and in some cases is more successful.

We fix the second thesis.
The universal tasks of project management are to increase efficiency and competitiveness (of a company, product, team).

These are very specific indicators. They can and should be measured (in each industry in its own way, but always unequivocally).

By the way, do not hesitate to use this when confronted with supposed demagogues or sellers of air "from project management." Translate the conversation about the indispensable importance of methods, management information systems, etc. in a measurable effect. Ask to explain what exactly can be measured “before” and “after”, and what will be the predictive values. And, having received the answer, again, do not be shy in the conclusions.

How unique are companies?

Need more specifics.

We found that where the company does not know how to systematically achieve a good result, it will go through different forms of management and, possibly, come to the project manager. The task of the latter is to increase efficiency and competitiveness. Ultimately, his career will depend on meeting these expectations.

It would seem that here we must stop, because the diversity of firms, their customers and other nuances will no longer allow a specific conversation to continue.

The good news is that before our conversation, dozens of dissertations have been written, the purpose of which is to somehow classify organizations in order to find patterns in their work, development, and staff requirements. We will take advantage of the work of our colleagues and try to continue the conversation.

We use the classification of Henry Mintzberg (formulated in his book “Structure in the Fist”) in order to understand in which companies a project manager may find himself, what expectations he has there, inside, will have to be equal and, ultimately, what forms he can take as a result, his career.

Below I will outline the essence of the Mintzberg theory very briefly and in my own words (deliberately omitting numerous nuances). For clarity, I will accompany the illustrations - I warn you, the individual pictures, at first glance, seem indecent.

Mintzberg conducted hundreds of studies of different firms, non-profit organizations and state. enterprises and came to the conclusion that any of them in structure can be attributed to one of several types (we consider only four).

Simple company

Many companies start as a small “startup” - one founder and several like-minded people who make up the so-called “operating core”. This type is called "simple company". It is as democratic as possible. But all power is in the hands of the founder (he is, ultimately, the “bottleneck” of the whole system). In the company there is nothing superfluous.


Figure 1 - Simple Company

Mechanistic bureaucracy - the power of standards and managers

Then the company grows. For example, in this way: the number of employees (for example, engineers) is expanding, i.e. increases the operating core. The founder-owner can no longer cope and the first managers come.



As the firm grows - the managerial layer increases. It thickens closer to the core (heads of sectors, divisions, departments), and thinner - to the “head”.



Over time, two peculiar appendages appear in the company (on the graph, in the form of octopuses). They do not explicitly refer to those who produce (engineers and other employees of the core), nor to those who command (the managerial layer and the head). They are like "side". One appendage is all kinds of auxiliary services that inevitably grow during the development of a company: accounting, personnel, lawyers, business executives and others (in the diagram, a sad octopus).



The second is not so obvious. These are forces seeking to streamline the system, standardize, describe, fix all processes in the form of instructions. This is all sorts of quality services, analysts (working on the standardization of internal processes). On the scheme - a cheerful octopus.



Figure 2 - Mechanistic bureaucracy

What we have described now, Mintzberg himself called the “Mechanistic bureaucracy” and referred to not the most humane forms of organizations (since there are especially ordinary employees who are most susceptible to demotivation and burnout). A striking example is a car assembly plant (by assembly, not by invention). The activity of the majority of employees is simple and strictly regulated (conveyor). The chiefs, first of all, monitor the observance of instructions and regulations that are carefully created and specified by one of the octopuses. Strategic decisions are made at the head of the company and, if necessary, go down from the top down. Please note that such companies are aimed at standardization of the work process (and these standards themselves describe). Mechanistic bureaucracies are clumsy and feel very good in a simple and stable environment (tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and after 5 years the procedure for assembling cars is unlikely to change significantly, so that such plants will flourish).

Professional bureaucracy - the power of specialists

The development of the company could go the other way. For example, if it turned out that the work that its employees are engaged in is too complicated. So much so that to control their every step is unthinkable. And even to shift it in the instructions is impossible.
An example is the work of a doctor.

Every doctor is a professional in his field. If someone controls the doctor, it’s not so much the boss as the older comrades (the intern is taken care of by full-fledged doctors, the doctors are looked after by the professors at the department).
Most of the time, the doctor works on a one-on-one basis with the patient. In a difficult case, he may ask for advice, but in general he must make decisions himself. All the more absurd to assume that the head of the clinic will give him instructions. In the West, clinics are often ruled by managers, in Russia they are, almost always, former doctors. But even in the Russian realities, the head physician can barely embrace his own former specialty (for example, cardiology), and is by no means incompetent in controlling, say, surgeons (I declare responsibly, as a former surgeon).

So it turns out that in order to work effectively, the company (in our example, the hospital) is being restructured. The operational core is growing, and the powers of its employees are growing.

The auxiliary device (sad octopus) grows after it, because should serve the diverse needs of professionals - bandage purchases, gurneys, invoicing, etc ...

The jolly octopus is, on the contrary, shrinking (only one eye remains on the diagram from it). We have already found out that hardly anyone in the hospital or even in the whole world will undertake to draw up instructions for each doctor for all occasions. Are limited only by small regulations (for example, where to store outpatient cards or where to pass the tickets after admission). But only an external institution over the years can teach a doctor how to work (HEI). So no hospital is trying to standardize the work, but only the skills with which the specialist must join its ranks.


Figure 3 - Professional bureaucracy

The managerial stratum is compressed as unnecessary (even in Russia, only 2-3 steps separate the doctor from the largest hospital: the head of the department, chief medical officer, and some “deputy head of the doctor for medical work”). The functions of the head of the company are also small and are reduced more to the administration. Very many requests that determine the strategy of the hospital ultimately come from the bottom - doctors come up with initiatives to purchase equipment, medicines, needs for new hospital facilities, and managers and senior managers interpret them and sometimes implement them. This form of organization Mintzberg calls "professional bureaucracy." It is fairly stable in a complex, but stable environment. Difficulty predetermines the requirements for professionalism (we do not know what the patient will come with tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the doctor should be able to learn a lot and learn this before coming to us - this is the difference from the worker from the conveyor, which we can learn from scratch ourselves). But the environment itself is fairly stable (the hospital knows what diseases exist in nature in general, which it may in principle need today or tomorrow or always) and, if there are professionals in the staff and money in the accounts, it is ready to cope with any adequate challenge.

Three types of organization - subtotals

So, three options. In what types of companies are project managers working? The truth is that in all three . Even small startups with a simple structure, and large bureaucracies (at first and second glances are not adapted to project management) hired managers. Of course, companies are also active where the employees themselves are at the helm.



Well, and in what company does the manager live best of all?
The answer is no .

Let's remember that each type of company is formed naturally in its environment.

Simple - in a simple, dynamic environment.
Mechanistic bureaucracy - in a simple, stable environment.
Professional bureau cardia - in a complex, stable environment.



Something is missing, right?
Yes, precisely, the most extreme variant: a complex, dynamic environment.

Those. one where specialist skills cannot be standardized (as in the example with the doctor). But at the same time, the environment itself is very changeable. Today, the client asks for one thing, tomorrow - something completely different, we have to constantly apply new technologies and do what we have never done before, do not know how to plan, and cannot evaluate.
A very remote example is to create at least some point of support: last year we created custom software, and in this we are asked to upgrade someone else's IT system, moreover, integrated with a couple of external systems, the developers of which no longer exist in nature and no documentation for the systems. An example is quite vital.

In such a situation, from the point of view of Mintzberg, the company will turn into the Adhocracy (from the Latin “Ad hoc” - upon request ”). The constellation systems, i.e. most different people of the highest qualifications will come together to meet the challenge of the external environment. They will be led not by the “boss-in-office”, but, in a sense, by a person much closer to them. Anyone who is not bogged down in formalism is able to communicate with each member of the team directly and adequately, without being a specialist in all aspects (it is impossible - the activity is too complicated). At the same time, such a manager will keep in mind the global goal and “integrate” (ie, unite into a single whole) all the participants, to ensure that their efforts are focused on a common result, and not in the style of “swan, cancer and pike” . Yes, yes, there was a classic project manager.

Adhocracy - the power of professional constellations, the homeland of the project manager

What does such a structure look like? It is a bit like a simple one, but its origin is excellent. The operating core is very significant (although, in some cases, it may consist of, say, an outsource team). The project manager is immersed in it, but at the same time, it does not lose touch with its supervisors. The managerial layer is shrinking (there is no need for it, the result, as in the example with doctors, is created below the floor). The auxiliary device joins the project manager and the core (in fact, how often does the project manager keep abreast of contracting, making payments, reconciling agreements, signing acts, etc.?). Standardization is not fully possible (otherwise it would have happened a long time ago) and is also combined with the work of the project manager and the kernel. Here are all sorts of quality services, here are project methodologies that help a lot, but they are not a panacea, apart from people.


Figure 4 - Adhocracy

So, four types of structures. Each has its own concept of efficiency and competitiveness. Each (rest assured), by posting vacancies or forming a staffing table, can add to it inadvertently a “project manager”. In each of the four types you can find yourself.

And what about career?

Just now, with the help of G. Mintzberg, we made a big step - we reduced all the companies to four main types (in fact, the author has a little more, but this does not change the essence).

Can we now, as we intended, to simulate the situation, expectations and possible career path of the project manager in each of them?

I am sure you already have certain considerations. Other - will require extensive discussions. I have nothing more to do than to communicate my subjective opinion here and share personal observations of my own and other people's careers over the past 10 years. I will do this as briefly as possible and invite you to share your own examples in the comments.

So, work and career.

Simple structures. Their effectiveness and competitiveness is the creation (development) of their main product. Usually, the product is one (or short line). A typical small startup is looking for a manager who is ready to believe in a product. Lack of sleep and without any guarantees to devote himself to the creation of a product-dream.

Where do project managers grow? These are almost ready businessmen. In my opinion, in such companies it is good for people (as expressed by Natalya Kaspersky “with a heightened level of internal aggression”), people are a little adventurous and aimed at creativity, risk and great success. Sometimes simple structures shoot and replenish the hall of fame, and managers join the ranks of those who reap great success (but, by the way, not always). More often - simple structures fade (such is the fate of nearly 99% of startups). But many of my familiar managers, people from such structures, are looking for themselves as entrepreneurs. In addition, skilled managers from simple structures are usually very good salespeople (and sometimes make a career, growing to commercial directors or business development specialists).

Mechanistic bureaucracy. Their effectiveness and competitiveness is in adhering to standards and regulations, sometimes in “sound management”. The obligatory survival skill in such structures is corporate thick-skin. The ability to apply the whip (to subordinates), catch the political wind (from the leadership and from the rapidly rising colleagues), the ability to find compromises, to be diplomatic and to choose the right way in the corporate "game of thrones." Possession of technical skills for a manager is, as a rule, uncritical, since it is successfully compensated by special managerial education (MBA and others) and local regulations.

Where do project managers grow?

Most often this is vertical growth. In my practice, the mechanistic bureaucracies were either some manufacturing enterprises, or large structures with a large share of state. capital. Successful career histories of project managers known to me are either growth in local top management, or transition to state. service (where acquired skills help adapt very quickly).

Professional bureaucracy. These companies aim to “do their job” on a daily basis. , . , -- . « », , , (, ), «» (, ). ( ) . , , - (, , ). . , «» , , , , 1 — . — . ( , ) — . — , «» ( , ). .

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Have a nice day!

Respectfully,