This is a very comon question asked by many PM aspirants. Techies want to become project managers fast, mostly becuase that is the only career path defined for them in most organizations. If some one asked me, about some thing I miss in my professional life very badly is 'technical skills'. When I was in my early thirties, I was doing very well technically and suddenly in one of the performance appraisals this question was asked to me by my then boss ' Do you want to tread the managerial path or the technical path? '. I was very much quick in choosing the managerial path. I dont regret it and at the same time, I wish I were more technical now (after 15 years of making that vital choice). Still, I am technical enough to design a data base....
Even now, that is even after 15 years of my decision to me managerial, I still see many techies, taking that hypocritical decision of moving into managerial line (I say it as hypocritical, becuase they are not doing justice to their heart's call, they are doing it to get the power or the fringe benefits associated with the mangerial position) at the cost of a great technical genious.
Recently I had a chat with a guy who is technically brilliant, but made the call to become a PM and lost both. I was continuously cautioning him about his decision, and he was his argumant was that ' he wants the title of a manager first and then decide whether it is technical or managerial' and towards the end he missed both.
What is the message?
In the present day scenario, to manage high tech projects, one need to be technical. I will rather say techno managerial.
All managerial positions in the software industry do not call for the same degree of techno awareness. It goes like this.
Director - development - techno - strategic - should be able to view the building blocks of the techno strategy
Project manager - Project management - high , technical medium
Product manager - project management - medium , technical - high
Engineering manager / development manager - project management - high , technology high
As we can see, there are different management positions in the software engineering projects, and the need for technology awareness vary from role to role...
If you are technologically good, build the PM capabilities.....and if you are good in PM, improve technology skills, if you are good in both, improve them further......
Both are mutually complementing. It is not one at the cost of the other. To be successful one need both
As per PMBOK - the project manager should have enough technical knowledge to guide the proceedings of the projects, as well as participate meaningfully in the project discussons.