jose m. sanchez wrote:
I know PMPs have knowledge to manage any kind of project, f.e. building construction, new "x" product release, etc., but there's not guarantee that they have knowledge about how to do software, and doing software is not easy.
Just so you know, there are several schools of thought on this. Some people do seem to think that a good project manager can manage any project. Jenny and I very much disagree with that -- we feel that you definitely need to know about software in order to manage a software project. One reason for that is that software projects run into very specific kinds of problems that you run into when you're doing software projects, and someone with no software experience won't see them coming, or understand them when they happen. (And for what it's worth, the PMBOK(r) Guide (which the PMP exam is based on) seems to agree with us on that -- it explicitly says that industry knowledge is needed.)
With this in mind, i personally suggest to get a PMP as a support for software development teams, but not as a leader. What's your opinion?
I've known many PMP certified project managers, including me and Jenny, with a lot of experience managing software projects. You need at least two years worth of project management experience before you're qualified to take the PMP exam, and that experience needs to come from somewhere. There are many people with PMP certifications -- like me -- who started out as programmers (I have a degree in CS from Carnegie Mellon, and worked as a programmer for years before going into management). So I recommend using a project manager who has a PMP certification but who also understands software development and the industry that your company services. It's a tall order, but it's also a very important position that you need to staff properly.
Oh, and one more thing: if you're an Agile shop, then your PMP certified project manager who understands software development also needs to understand Agile. And yes, there are people like that out there. I've talked to many of them -- in fact, when we do talks at PMI conferences and meetings to audiences of PMP certified project managers, we almost always get questions about Agile and how it applies to what we spoke about.
Andrew
Andrew Stellman
Author of Head First Agile, Learning Agile, Beautiful Teams, Head First C#, Head First PMP, and Applied Software Project Management (O'Reilly)