The Project Manager Renaissance
When I began my career in software 20 years ago, programmers were our lords. They were the chosen ones, geniuses amongst men, and masters of the dark arts. Software was their world and the rest of us were just living in it. When us normies (customers, designers, PM’s, etc.) needed new features, we approached the Webmaster like a street urchin holding up an empty bowl. “Please sir, just a small text change.”
But wow have things shifted.
First, although programming languages are as inscrutable as ever, the idea of code, and how it works, has gone mainstream. The veneer of magic has been replaced with the banality of writing instructional logic, and a proliferation of competent developers across the world.
Second, there’s now an elephant in the office- Artificial Intelligence. Like the grand finale of a magic show, it seems the resident geniuses are nearing their ultimate goal: automating themselves. “There will be no programmers in five years,” says tech CEO Emad Mostaque, and he may be right.
Third, digital products no longer exist on an island. Software has transformed from standalone apps into a vibrant ecosystem of platforms, API’s, and third party services. These tools aren’t optional- they are required for survival. Take google analytics. Back in the day your lord webmaster might just add some visitor logs, and email you the numbers once a quarter. Nowadays you drop in a GA snippet and get a massively featured real-time dashboard, with rich data about where your visitors came from, what they did, for how long, etc. You can even set up conversion funnels and custom event tracking.
And guess whose job that is? That’s right- the project manager.
Sure you might hire a data analytics expert, or an email marketing expert, or a programmer, or a UX designer, etc. But there’s just one person sitting in the middle of it all: the project manager. The rise of software-as-a-service has formed a layer of abstraction that brings project managers center stage. They are the captains now, the Scrum-Masters of our destiny. So if you need something, you had better write a ticket.
