On Architects and Project Managers...

As our IT environment has grown more distributed, so hasn't the need to fragment the support of the assets grown? It used to be a business customer negotiated with an application manager (with vested interest in an application) to get work done. Nowadays a project may get assigned a PM that is not familiar with an application or the technologies in use. This is indeed a failure of the PMO mentality. James McGovern makes an interesting argument about PMs ... and other bloggers allude to a link between the technical background of a PM and their ability to be successful. PMs often get assigned to projects where a new solution or significant system changes is occurring. It is not their job to deliver on the promise of SOA or balance the impact of the changes to the IT portfolio--nor are they rewarded for such. That's the architect's role. There is goodness in a healthy tension between an architect and a PM on a project. Done correctly there is balance like Ying and Yang. Their priorities are just different. PMs need to get the function deliverables complete, on-time, with minimum number of resources and come under budget. Architects concern themselves with non-functional qualities, least amount of design change to meet the need, and implications to the greater environment. PMs need to be selected for their capability to deliver...the same reason you would not assign a DBA to write java code (no offense to those with both talents), you would not take a business-oriented PM ... and put them on an SOA refactoring project. Bottom-line it’s the right person for the right job. I know PMs that think like architects and I know architects that work like PMs. That's what makes them special.