I’ve been doing project management the majority of my career.
The hardest part that I see in making the switch from technical engineering to project management is not necessarily the people skills, while they are important I have seen many successful project managers with the people skills of a garden slug.
The hardest part IMHO is giving up control. You no longer have the luxury of taking long looks at every technical aspect of the project but have to start delegating this responsibility to the technical engineers working on your project. It is a matter of trusting people and starting to think more of schedule budget than technical quality.
The trap that engineers often fall into is becoming micro managers. Think about how much you liked being micromanaged and then realize that your people do not like it any more.
It will also be a lot more difficult to move from being one of the technical engineers in the pack to managing the people who are today your co-workers.
Managing professionals is actually very easy. Professionals, especially engineers, want to be motivated and productive. They get a good deal of self-satisfaction from doing a good job and will willingly go the extra mile to do so.
The most important factor in managing engineers is keeping them focused on the task at hand. If they want to spend several days making a small refinement in one minor aspect of the design, it is your responsibility to get them working on what you see as a major and more important problem. Beyond that all you have to do is let them know that their contributions are valuable and appreciated and that you have trust in their technical competence.
Once they start trusting your professional judgement then being a project manager becomes very easy and because you are leveraging your skills you can have a significant impact on the project and therefore get a lot more satisfaction out of your work than being a technical engineer concentrating on one small portion of the work.
It does require some different skill sets. I took an MBA to develop the ability to think like a manager and can switch between management and engineering problem solving skills with relative ease. Using engineering problem solving skills is not always the best way to solve managerial problems and the reverse is true as well.
Finally remember the principle of command responsibility. If you are in command then you are responsible. There is no grey area in this one. Everything that goes wrong is your fault and everything that goes right is to the credit of your team. Follow this one rule 100% and magically there will be a lot more things going right than wrong as people will start working together as a team and covering for each other’s weaknesses with their strengths instead of passing on something that is not specifically their job.
Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng
Construction Project Management
From conception to completion
