Still learning

Despite the fact that I have been a project manager since around October 2000, I still feel almost... new to the job. Does that make any sense?

Perhaps it's because time flies when you're having fun. Perhaps it's a sign that I am getting older. More likely is that there is more to learn about it than anything I have ever done before.

Learning to be a programmer took no time at all - I did my Data Processing and CoBol course in about three months. Learning to be a good one took a lot longer, but I got there. After a couple of years, I was one of those techies that the others came to when they wanted to know something; someone my boss came to when they needed a difficult piece of work done. It was a technical - a hard - skill.

Management, I think, is totally different. There is so much to learn, so many theories, techniques and processes, so many people espousing them for free or for profit. I did my part-time university course on project management in six months. At the end of it, I felt not that I was now A MANAGER, but that I had taken the first few steps along a long, winding and wearying road.

When I lost my first management job, my wife told me not to worry, that I was a good manager. "No," I replied. "Not yet. But I will be."

I firmly believe that I am now a reasonably good manager. I base this on the fact that my projects (or at least the aspects of them that I controlled) have been successful, on the feedback I have received from my peers and most importantly my customers, and on my own sense that I have been improving all the time.

I still feel, though, that there is so much more to learn. Both on the job from raw experience, and from other sources - reading material, the internet, etc. The trick, I think, comes from sifting out the nuggets of knowledge from the self-promoting claptrap.

My findings in the former category will be making it into my blogroll soon.

My findings in the latter might just be mentioned in passing in an uncomplimentary review or two.

Watch this space.