Thursday, March 18, 2010

Network Dictionary — Project Manager

May 12, 2009 by Greg Ferro · 1 Comment 

This Post is Part of a Series — click for list on Network Dictionary»

Project Manager — the per­son who does the paper­work so that the engin­eer can do real work. Once upon a time called a sec­ret­ary, but ego deman­ded that they be seen as more import­ant, thus pro­ject manager.

Once upon a time, pro­ject man­age­ment was done by “middle man­age­ment” but became unfash­ion­able in the 90’s so exec­ut­ives sacked them all in the name of effi­ciency and downs­iz­ing. Naturally, the exec­ut­ive man­agers sud­denly found that they had a lot of paper­work to do, and meet­ings to attend for ‘non-​​serious’ things that left no time for golf. Instead of bring­ing back middle man­age­ment (and admit­ting their mis­take) they latched onto the NASA idea of “pro­ject man­age­ment” which gave them a way out.

All of the sec­ret­arial func­tions were then handed to “pro­jects” and golf resumed. The ori­ginal intent of NASA was that a pro­ject would be run by sev­eral ‘pro­ject sec­ret­ar­ies” and one ‘pro­ject man­ager’ who had author­ity. Today, it’s a bit different.

Alternate Definition: semi-​​retirement role for engin­eers who weary of being on the front line.

List of Posts in this series:
  1. Network Dictionary — Freelance
  2. Network Dictionary — Resume Generating Events
  3. Network Dictionary — Scalable
  4. Network Dictionary — magic hand wave
  5. Network Dictionary — NAT’d
  6. Network Dictionary — Pain Relief Technology
  7. Network Dictionary — work­shop
  8. Network Dictionary — Process Humping
  9. Network Dictionary — appsel­la­tion
  10. Network Dictionary — Spinning Rust
  11. Network Dictionary — Server Hugger
  12. Network Dictionary — Facepalm
  13. Network Dictionary — Nortard
  14. Network Dictionary — Ciscotist
  15. Network Dictionary — long­horn
  16. Network Dictionary — IEEEdiot
  17. Network Dictionary — foo
  18. Network Dictionary — Ethereal
  19. Network Dictionary — Signal Slope
  20. Network Dictionary — lever­age
  21. Network Dictionary — Microsoft Standard
  22. Network Dictionary — Brandalize
  23. Network Dictionary — Blamestorming
  24. Network Dictionary — CCIE Pounds
  25. Network Dictionary — borked
  26. Network Dictionary — tech­nobabble
  27. Network Dictionary — Markenauts
  28. Network Dictionary — Implementation
  29. Network Dictionary — Distributed Attention
  30. Network Dictionary — func­tion­al­ity
  31. Network Dictionary — cof­fice
  32. Network Dictionary — Rubber Duck Debugging
  33. Network Dictionary — Unicorn Tears
  34. Network Dictionary —  survivor’s bias
  35. Network Dictionary — IPocalypse
  36. Network Dictionary — slugged
  37. Network Dictionary — Project Manager
  38. Network Dictionary — Sanity Cheque
  39. Network Dictionary — goodth­ing
  40. Network Dictionary: Fun Detector
  41. Network Dictionary: Cock Blocked
  42. Network Dictionary — TACrathon
  43. Network Dictionary — Backhoe Attenuation
  44. Network Dictionary — heater
Powered by Hackadelic Sliding Notes 1.6.4

Please rate this post:

  Why Rate Posts?
1 Star - It\\\'s Crud2 Stars - It\\\'s Tosh3 Stars - Something\\\'s missing4 Stars - Needs works5 Stars - Good Enough6 Stars - Good7 Stars - Excellent8 Stars - Brilliant9 Stars - Astonishing10 Stars - Awesomely Godlike? (2 votes, average: 8.50 out of 10)
Loading ... Loading ...

Comments

One Response to “Network Dictionary — Project Manager”
  1. Paul says:

    First I was hor­ri­fied, almost angry, but then I had a think about it. (This is not very PM its all about pro­activ­ity after all)

    When I had thought about it yes I shuffle the paper, some­times I trans­late the engin­eer­ing talk in to busi­ness talk but its still paperwork.

    Yours humbled

Speak Your Mind

Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!