Web project management in action

In April the webzine A List Apart published the findings from a survey that – for the second year – tries to highlight patterns and behaviours among web job titles.

Last year I isolated some information regarding web project managers [in Italian] so it’s quite interesting to compare this hypothesis with the new findings.

There are several confirmations. A web project manager:

• follows an educational path that usually starts in the programming field
• usually works for small or mid-sized businesses
• it’s 30 to 40 years old
• works for a corporate more often than as a freelance

Let’s have a closer look at the findings.  Some questions are different from the 2008 so a direct comparison is only approximate.

Corporate versus freelance

This analysis was not included in the 2007 survey and it represents the percentage of web project managers that work for corporates rather than as freelances. Compared to the other job titles, a web project manager more often works as for a corporate rather than as a freelance.

This is not an unexpected finding and I’ve already answered to a similar question in the FAQ (Does the web project manager work for a company or is he a freelance?): in most cases a web project manager works for the company he manages projects for because the quality of the project depends on reciprocal people acquaintance. This approach is not profitable if the web project manager works as a freelance.

There are, however, situations in which the web project manager is a freelance; it works for one or more periods of time (usually semesters) in order to help the company in improving project management skills.

Percentage of web project managers

Looking at the 2 years there are not significant differences compared to the other job titles.

Quite impressive the “other” category, more than 1/4 of the total.

Job title distribution by organization type

The table shows the percentage of web project managers employed in different organizations (note that some categories have been merged with respect to last year).

The majority of web project managers (8.4%) work in small organizations.  This confirms a trend:  a web project manager most of the time works for a startup, an organization where frequent deployments and strict timing require a professional in charge for the achivement of the objectives.

Job title distribution by age group

There are not many differences between the two years. One is not born web project manager, but becomes a web project manager after some years of experience (usually when she is 30/35 years old).

Gender distribution by job title

There is a small increment regarding the role of females in web project management, and the same increment is shared by all the job titles, maybe an indication of the improved visibility given this year to the survey.

Percentage of job-title holders who earn salaries of $100k+

The trend of last year is somehow confirmed.

Perceived relevance of education by job title

There are some changes regarding the perceived relevance of education.

The fact that all job titles experienced an increase in satisfaction can be considered a sign that the question was better understood by participants than last year. In general, however, a bit more than 50% indicated as relevant their education, suggesting that there is room for improvement.

Job satisfaction by job title

The percentages increase a lot with respect of last year: maybe this is another case where the question was better understood.

Compared to other job titles, however, web project managers’ satisfaction increase in less proportion, leaving the top of the list.

It’s quite difficult to explain the reasons considering that the variation happened in just a year. Maybe the web project manager’s role, in some context, can’t find the room that it deserves.

But, on the other hand, it’s high time for the web project management to grow from a discipline that confine all the responsibilities to the project manager towards a source of leadership and vision.

Prelevance of blogging by job title

The web project manager is the tail-end when it comes to writing for a blog.

As suggested last year, the reason can be that it’s difficult to write regarding a job strictly related to human interactions and with many facets. Difficult, but not impossible. A pity.

Participation in formal training by job title

The web project manager is one of the job title holders that more take part in formal training. The percentage is close to the ones of professionals that are used to a constant training, such us usability and accessibility consultants.

This result can be explained by the heterogeneity of skills (managerial and technical) required for a web project manager.

Perceived skill gaps

Concerning back-end programming, less that 17% states to have some skill gaps. This result, compared to the other skill gaps graphs, confirms a trend: one becomes web project manager usually starting to work in areas close to programming, rather then design or marketing.

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is considered the bible of project management. Bible in that it deals with every facet of project management by means of 5 process groups (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, closing). Bible also for its size, more than 400 pages packed with concepts that often scare who is studying to become a Project Management Professional.

Thanks to this reputation, concepts expressed in the PMBOK could seem far from the agile development methodology and some weeks ago I expressed my opinions regarding this topic in the Web Project Management FAQ.

And now Forrester publishes on its site an interesting (but not free) report, The PMBOK and agile: friends or foes?, that deepens these arguments.

Starting from the differences between PMBOK and agile development, the authors soon highlight several points of contact between these 2 approaches. But it’s the last part of the report, where they state that it’s possible to combine the strengths of both to optimize outcomes, the more interesting.

In particular, an agile developer can find in the PMBOK:

• a help to clearly define project initiation and closeure;
• a guide to effectively communicate with all the stakeholders;
• clear directives for risk management.

Conversely, an agile methology can help traditional project managers in:

• defining roles and responsibilities across teams, giving individuals the opportunity to learn from each others and to plan collectively;
• encouraging teams to focus on detailed planning of smaller blocks and using that knowlegde to influence future planning;
• building stronger relationships with customers;
• writing the “right” amount of documentation.

Last saturday in Ljubljana (Slovenia) I attended my first barcamp. Or, better, I attended the first barcamp worthy of its name.

The success of this initiative has to be equally shared between organizers, speakers and the ones that filled the rooms.

The organizers set a simple, yet winning formula:

• 20 minutes for every speech including Q&A, without possibility of overrun
• final session with 5 minutes speeches without questions in order to attract hesitant and shy people
• explicit request to speak English (in Slovenia, differently than in Italy, they speak a very good English)
• breakfast and lunch for free and t-shirt for 10 euro to fund the event
• evening party

Everyone has to be rewarded for being an active part of the conversation with hundreds of questions, requests and speeches rarely commonplace.

A barcamp that gives many suggestions to Italian organizers of similar events:

• organizers followed most of the events in the first line, rather then limit their appearance for public relations;
• they give up the idea of streaming the event (an expensive and unnecessary option considering that a barcamp is made of many concurrent conversations) and decided to allocate resources to improve the attendees experience
• speakers developed their presentations to last for few minutes but, more importantly, to give a starting point for the discussion. It’s easy to state that a barcamp is not made by a passive audience, but it has to be possible for attendees to easily join the conversation

All this without astronomical sponsors or guest starts.

This article contains answers to several questions I receive regarding web project management and can be considered a sequel to what I wrote in Introduction to web project management.

It’s a starting point. If you think that there are some aspects that deserve to be deepened you can use comments or the contact page.

• What is web project management?
• What is the role of a web project manager?
• What is a web project?
• Is web project management a methodology?
• Are there courses that help in mastering web project management?
• What is the difference between web project management and software project management?
• Is web project manager synonymous of webmaster?
• Does a web project manager work for the marketing or IT department?
• Does a web project manager work only for mid-size or big companies?
• Can a startup be interested in hiring a web project manager?
• How does web project management fit in an agile development environment?
• Can a web project manager be responsible only for a part of the project, such as web design?
• What are the roles involved in building a web project?
• How much a web project manager has to master his team’s skills?
• Does the web project manager work for a company or is he a freelance?
• Does a web project manager need to master Microsoft Project?
• Is web project management is a full-time job?
• What’s the difference between management and leadership?

What is web project management?

Web project management is a discipline that helps building web projects (sites and applications) that are delivered complying with the deadlines, planning the best compromise between quality and cost and satisfying initial requirements. Web project managements is the expression of the web project manager’s skills in organizing and managing resources towards a shared goal.

What is the role of a web project manager?

The web project manager is the professional in charge of the management and coordination of a web project from its inception to the delivery, dealing with every person involved in the project. For a detailed explanation of the web project manager skills, you can take a look at Introduction to Web Project Management.

What is a web project?

A web project is the set of activities required to build sites or applications that satisfy user requirements. It spans between specific start and completion (delivery) dates and its goal is to create a unique product or service which brings beneficial change or added value. A project is different from a process in that the latter is made by a repetitive series of steps to produce the same product or service (see the definition of project management in Wikipedia).

Is web project management a methodology?

No. Attending some courses you have the feeling that project management is just a series of rules to adhere to using Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Project, all surrounded by acronyms like Prince2, PMBOK, PERT, Scrum. Methodologies are important because they set guidelines that facilitate many web project manager’s tasks, but web project management is a job made of relations with clients, developers, designers and freelancers. A project manager is first and foremost a  leader, not a tracker.

Are there courses that help in mastering web project management?

No one, except some rare case starts his career as a web project manager. A more common situation is to work for the IT department of a software house or web agency  and develop management skills that can eventually lead to become a web project manager. A web project management course can help the project manager in improving her skills and competences, especially in terms of analysys and risk management. But a course is not enough to help a student, a designer or a developer master this discipline.

What is the difference between web project management and software project management?

Web project management has its own peculiarities that make it different from the “classical” definition of software project management in terms of innovation and communication.  The web project manager’s skills span multiple disciplines, such as publishing, design and television. These characteristics are well expressed in Web Project Management, a book by Ashley Friedlein:

• development schedules shorter and more aggressive;
• multiple projects to be managed simultaneously;
• “cutting edge” technology;
• no standard pricing models;
• clients understand the medium and its parameters less well;
• team members often perform multiple tasks and roles;
• project manager is not always the main point of clients contact;
• innovation is key objective for many web projects;
• change is endemic.

Is web project manager synonymous of webmaster?

No. The web project manager is the professional responsible for the right execution (design, development, release) of a web project. Once a project is delivered the web project manager is no longer responsible. At this point the webmaster is in charge of the ordinary management of the site or application. Usually a web project manager works for a consulting company while the webmaster works for the same company that commissioned the project.

Does a web project manager work for the marketing or IT department?

The web project manager usually belongs to the IT or creative department. Reading some resumes or job proposal it happens that one can find the term “web marketing manager”. This label doesn’t identify the professional responsible of the project, but the one in charge of the marketing part of the site, the set of activities aimed to bring traffics toward the web site or web application. Sometimes the term “web project manager” is erroneously used to mean “web marketing project manager”.

Does a web project manager work only for mid-size or big companies?

No. A web project manager can work both for big and small companies. What can differ is the role of the web project manager in these different kind of companies.

In mid-sized or big companies the web project manager can work for project that last several months. In this specific case the web project manager has to possess a strong understanding of project planning and risk management because even the smallest problem can have a huge impact on costs.

In small companies the web project manager usually manages various projects at the same time, many of which can last for few weeks. In this case it’s important for the web project manager to be able to define roles and schedule team members ensuring that project resources are used effectively.

For these reasons a web project manager should underline his skills while writing a resume, specifying in detail roles and responsibilities.

Can a startup be interested in hiring a web project manager?

Yes and it’s self evident reading the findings from the web design survey held by the ezine A List Apart in 2007. Job title distribution by organization type, in particular, highlight that the greatest percentage of web project managers work for startups, followed by web and software agencies. A possible reason is that in working environments that require strong innovation skills, frequent releases and fast changing roadmaps, a management role is paramount.

How does web project management fit in an agile development environment?

Web project management finds its expression with different methodologies and development tecniques. It’s a project manager’s task to define, together with his team, the right method to follow and, when needed, its learning and widening.

Can a web project manager be responsible only for a part of the project, such as web design?

It depends. Usually a web project manager is responsible for the entire project’s life cycle, from its inception to the delivery. However, if his firm works only in the web design field, the web project manager obviously will be responible only for this part, that eventually will converge in a broaden project. This activity has however its own life cycle, that could end when templates are developed.

In well structured situations a web project manager can be in charge of a part of the entire project, while other colleagues can be in charge of other sections. In this case it can be that a gerarchic structure exists, with junior web project managers that report to senior web project managers.

What are the roles involved in building a web project?

It depends on the project, but usually the main roles, apart from the web project manager, are:

• account manager – responsible for winning new business, he’s usually the first person the client meet;
• webmaster – manages the site once it’s live;
• information architect – build and organize the site’s architecture so that information is easily searchable and findable;
• art director / web designer – responsible of the creative concept of the entire product;
• analyst / developer – the professional that, together with the web project manager defines the technical standards to adopt and is responsible of the programming part;
• editor / copywriter – chooses and writes the site contents;
• consultants (marketing, usability, user experience, strategy, etc.) – professionals with particular expertise not found in the agency.

Other experts can help with the project delivery, such as testers, illustrators, database administrators, audio/video professionals, journalists, search engine optimizators, community professionals.

How much a web project manager has to master his team’s skills?

A lot. The ideal situation would be that the web project manager is able to build on his own some parts of the project and that he reserves time to do so. This would allow him to be up to date with current standards and solutions and to anticipate problems. Project planning skills can be improved too, even if it’s clear that the web project manager should ask his team to provide a detailed scheduling.

Does the web project manager work for a company or is he a freelance?

In most cases a web project manager works for the company he manages projects for. The main reason, considering that he’s a professional that works closely with other experts, is that the quality of the project depends on reciprocal people acquaintance. This approach is not profitable if the web project manager is a freelance.

Does a web project manager need to master Microsoft Project?

It depends. Some web project managers work with just Excel sheets while others prefer to build complex diagram in Microsoft Project. More than the tool what’s important is to keep these documents updates and share them. A detailed diagram kept in the web project manager’s drawer is useless, while a simple sheet of paper delivered every week to every member of the team is invaluable.

Is web project management a full-time job?

In small agencies it’s quite common that the web project manager works side by side with his team and helps developing small portions of code. This is the ideal working environment for him, because he has the opportunity to improve his technical skills too.

What’s the difference between management and leadership?

The answer to this question is well expressed in an article written by Mike Morrison. In short management skills are the ones required to manage people and resources to deliver a product or service while leadership skills are the ones required to engage with people and persuade them to ‘buy-in’ to a vision or goal.

End one of Le Web ‘08 in Paris ends here. Here are some citations and feelings from today Le Web ‘08 that I agree with:

• We yet have to see the consequences of this economical crisis (during the panel Getting financed in a recession)
• I hope the market will fall down till people understand what has real value (Paolo Coelho)
• Recessions give new opportunity. During recession times it’s harder to be finances, but you have less competitors too
• Solo-leaders would have not built the web (David Weinberger)

If you ask venture capitalists here at Le Web 2.0 if bad periods await us during the next year, most of them don’t deny say no. They are not alone. Paul Coelho is on the same wave lenght.

Mike Butcher from TechCrunch noted that year 2007 saw lot of activity concerning European startups, with Webex, Double click,Reuters, Aquantive being the more productive.

Market clearly picked last year, but then prices started to fall.

Recent investments were:

• networks go niche (the updown, kindo, visible path)
• advertisers get smarter (adinfuse, smaato, consorte)
• everything goes mobile (mystrands, sreamezzo, betnow)
• return of professional content (tvtrip, videojug)
• media becomes immersive (superscape, payfirst)
• shopping gets social
• software in the sky

What next?

There is still lots of activity (such as stupeflix, floobs, rummble, second brain). Plus, Europe is getting connected

Key strenghts in Europe:

• social applications
• mobile/3g
• data creation
• first class engineering

Weakness:

• fear of failure
• smaller local markets
• need more 2nd and 3rd enterpreneurs

On the positive side:

• ability to deal with diverse markets
• mobile
• state support for startups

Mobile helps change the rules

Paulo Coelho in the past refused to give rights in order to make films from his books but, starting with the Witch of Portobello he started a project. Coelho has asked aspiring filmmakers to tell the tale from the point of view of one of the 13 characters in the book. He had an impressive response, with some hundreds of music and movies to select from.

Coelho thinks that privacy, from the book author perspective, should be stimulated. People can’t read online, so they download books but eventually buy the printed copy.

For this reason he decided to put on his site some full texts so that one can “pirate” his books. He only owns the right for the Portuguese version: sometimes readers translate books that are not translated yet.

Being tolerant about the usage of his books let him sell more.

The goal of every writer is to share his works.

He is sure that a period of recession will make people understand the real value of free and of the social networks and new ways  of communication.

In a very interesting speech Itay Talgam, Israeli conductor of orchestras and musician, talked about leadership and “love” as seen from the perspective of music and conductors.

The idea of music and love go well together. Love, in particular, is an easy object for music. When you just love music everything is easy, but when you have to play music it’s more difficult. Even more difficult it is when there are many people that play and that you have to coordinate, or to conduct, such as in an orchestra.

Conductor in French is chef – and the meaning is similar to winner. The job of a conductor, however, is not just to lead, but to connect people through happiness. And connect not only the musicians, but also the audience.

Talgam showed a movie clip in which the conductor Carlos Kleiber doesn’t just lead the orchestra, but shows his feelings and leaves space for the whole orchestra to add value to the performance. And he doesn’t forget the audience too (and that’s not easy, especially if you are in Vienna). This is an act of love.

Compare it to classical conducting, for example Riccardo Muti. This is a different kind of love. It’s love for order. In the movie clip Muti tells everybody what has to do. Players  not only know the orders, but also the sanctions.

Kleiber instead doesn’t tell them what to do, but how he feels about the music. He opens up space for them to give interpretation. It’s about the meaning, it’s a process, not just instructions.

How to make love and keep things in control? If you are in charge in a process you need also to have the authority when somethings go wrong. In this way you are able to tell someone that he is out of line (another movie clips showed how Kleiber does that).

Kleiber is able to give space to the different elements going forth and back on the orchestra scene.

The feedback he gives to his orchestra are the kind of feedback you would like to have when you cook something for the ones your love.

David Weinberger suggests that the age of informations, as we are used to know it, has come to an end.
The end of information doesn’t mean that there will not be information. It’s the contrary: we will always have it. But the viewof the world will change.
Today the process of informations follows this path:

• sociality
• understanding
• meaning
• information
• bits

The process starts with lot of informations and tends to reduce it. When information is reduces is more manageable.

Bur reducing information so that it can be standardize means that, when applied to a person, the person becomes “boring”. That’s because we’ve been required by information to throw out most of information in order to be able to manage it.

That is changing. Nowadays (Facebook for example) there is a lot of information, but also a lot of links, created without control. There is alot more of information than during the age of information. While the age of information reduces hyperlinks, this new age of information connect and emphasize

What about leadership? Leadership as we know it is based on scarcity. Consider for example Jack Welch. It was a great leader and the CIO of General Eletric. In this context leadership is tied to scarcity. Leadeship itself is scarce.

The leader is the only one that has access to all of the information in the firm. And for him to succeed he keeps the information scarced for the rest of us. But the leader is overwhelmed with information. it makes decisions like a computer, garbage in, garbage out. This id the information-based model of leadership. In thi way there is also a scarcety of people, just one isolated figure that decides, communicates, coordinates, has vision, strategy, is accountable.

It’s not natural that one person can do it, and it fact’s he doesn’t do it very well.

Compare this with crowdsourcing leadership. In this context the job of the leader gets ditributed over the network. In an environment like that decision making is a failure of leadership: if you put decision on the top that is a sign of failure of the network.

That’s why solo-leaders would have not built the web

Leadership is a property of the network, not of the individual.

Weinberger introduces also the meaning of “adundant governance” with examples taken from the recent US elections. Change.gov, the site released shortly after the election, is not perfect but they are changing and improving it every day.

This leads to the “reputational democracy”, a new level od democracy that did not exist before. This democracy is very dependent on very little tiny choices: small change can have huge repercussions.

So what will leadership be in the future? It’s very difficult to know, because there are so many forces into play (myth, power,ego,collaboration, money, generational change, tradition, realism, institutions).  We cannot predict it. Weinberger hopes that the notion of the leader will go away.

There are great leaders, but they are too scarce. leadership embraces abundance of connections.

My opinion after this speech is that Microsoft, even if Lewis states the contrary, doesn’t move away from its old position of monolithic corporation. Lewin says that you can choose open source if you want, but developing is adopting a path. If you choose Microsoft, you choose efficiency and high-quality, plus support to all standards and protocols. If you want, you can aslo use their operating systems with other technologies (eg. Mysql).

Lots of empty words.