Discover the Skills of a Technical Project Manager
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the who, what, where, when, why, and how of technical project management.
- List key skills needed to become a technical project manager.
- Explain relevant security experience and skills to be successful as a technical project manager.
Have You Considered a Career as a Technical Project Manager?
Let’s talk about the who, what, where, when, why, and how of technical project management. In the previous unit, we walked in the shoes of a technical project manager. As you continue to consider this role, let's dig into some important questions to determine whether it's a good fit.
Who are you?
Do you have a passion for solving complex business problems? Do you want to be able to look back at your work and see a tangible accomplishment? Are you a perfectionist who is always looking for ways to improve? If you answered yes to these questions, then technical project management may be a great fit for you.
What do you like to do?
What do you do as a technical project manager? It all comes down to brainstorming, planning, scheduling, and monitoring projects within an organization. You ensure projects are completed to a specification, within an established time frame and budget. You like to communicate in both technical and nontechnical terms.
Where do you want to work?
Where do technical project managers work? You work in the government or private sector. You might work for the financial services industry, a technology company, a cybersecurity vendor, a consulting firm, a marketing agency, the communications sector, at a nonprofit, or any other industry. You might be part of a project management team that needs to incorporate security considerations into a general technical project you are spearheading. Or you may be working on a security team leading a technical project that is specific to security, such as a new vulnerability management system or a cybersecurity risk management tool.
When are you involved in an organization’s work?
When in the project lifecycle do you get involved? You have a role to play every step of the way, from preparing for the project, to planning and architecting requirements, to constructing and deploying the project, and monitoring and controlling progress.
How are you successful in the role?
How do you accomplish all this? To give you a closer look, let’s meet Jamal. He’s a technical project manager at a technology company that specializes in internet-related services. As a technical project manager, Jamal:
- Understands the problems, desires, and expectations of his employees and clients.
- Translates big picture goals into budgets and timelines.
- Gains alignment and wins the trust of stakeholders.
- Executes the project plan.
- Manages the budget.
- Oversees project communications.
- Ensures the project stays on schedule.
- Applies expertise in hardware and software installation, upgrades, site maintenance, and other technical skills.
- Monitors progress and manages ongoing maintenance using key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine whether he is achieving the desired results.
- Manages gaps and risks to the project and mitigates their impact.
- Transitions the completed project to ongoing business operations once it has been completed.
Sometimes Jamal takes on a project from day one, and in other cases is asked to take over an existing project. When taking over an existing project, he gathers information from his predecessor and reviews it to understand existing processes, concerns, and goals.
Why should you consider this role?
Why should you consider a technical project management career like Jamal? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employment of computer and information systems managers is projected to grow 11 percent from 2020 to 2030, faster than the average for all occupations. And technical project managers made a median pay of $159,010 per year in 2021, according to the BLS.
Additionally, as a technical project manager, no two days are ever the same. Every day you get to wear a different hat. Sometimes you need to be a teacher, other days you need to be a coach, and sometimes you play the role of a drill sergeant.
Each of these people leads in a different way, and, based on the needs of the project, the technical project manager must be comfortable moving in and out of these roles, sometimes several times in a single day.
As a technical project manager, you work hard to achieve a goal, and you can look back at a deployment and know it had an impact on the organization. You can also continue making changes to the application the same day it is deployed. This is a rare gift. Can you imagine an artist walking into a museum with a paintbrush and telling the curator, “Hold on a second, I just want to add a few more brush strokes.”? In technical project management, you can complete a project and continue building upon it concurrently. Your goal is to deliver outcomes effectively and efficiently.
Technical Project Manager Skills
Like Jamal, you’re excited by gaining alignment from stakeholders and successfully executing the project plan to deliver secure products to your customers. So, what education and skills do you need to pursue this career?
Education
In many cases, a bachelor’s degree is required for entry level jobs. Degrees in information or computer science, engineering, or a related field are often a good fit for the role. You can also consider getting a degree in business administration or management of information technology to gain additional knowledge that is helpful in the job.
Experience
Typically, employers seek candidates who have 3 to 5 years of experience in IT or project management. Experience in hardware and software installation and upgrades, building roadmaps, or in other areas of IT such as web management, security engineering, security consulting, scrum, or product management are all valuable. However, technical project managers don’t fit into a fixed mold. Although technical skills are essential, technical project managers can come from a variety of professional backgrounds. Technical project managers sometimes have experience in another field, such as marketing or technology, and decide to pivot into project management.
Project management jobs aren’t always referenced with consistent titles. You will likely see any of the following used: agile project manager, technical project manager, technical program manager, or project manager.
Getting Started
Maybe you’re a junior project manager who’s ready for a higher level role. Or your team relies on you to keep them on track, but you’ve never had a project management title. To break into the field, it may help to find a small company and join as a junior project manager to get some of the experience necessary under your belt. Or join a rotational technology internship to get experience working with a number of different teams. You may also look at larger companies that have many different job positions in the project management field, and may have entry level positions such as a project administrator, analyst, or control officer that you can start in. You may also get a job on an IT project as a quality assurance (QA) engineer, developer, development-operations (DevOps) analyst, business analyst, or a scrum master. From there you can prepare for a transition to a technical project manager role.
Certifications
To help you skill up or get your foot in the door, pursuing a certification is a great idea. Some common certifications for technical project managers include the Project Management Professional (PMP®), Certified ScrumMaster, Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), or technology specific certifications such as the AWS Certified Solutions Architect—Associate.
Knowledge
As a technical project manager, having a solid understanding of the basics such as IT infrastructure and architecture, and software development is key. You should also have strong familiarity with the agile development concept. It’s also helpful, but not required, to have knowledge of computer programming and mathematics.
Business Skills
In addition to these technical skills, it’s equally if not more important to hone your business skills. A huge part of being successful as a technical project manager is being able to think strategically about managing projects and about information security. You should know how to budget, schedule, and plan a project, and have familiarity with project management software tools. You should enjoy the process of engaging with stakeholders, serving customers, and leading teams. Those who are successful in this role often have a passion for security and possess excellent verbal and written communication skills. They love collaboration and teamwork, staying organized, and breaking down problems and executing solutions to them in a structured manner.
In technical project management, there’s always something new to learn, and you have a direct impact on turning big picture ideas into tangible technology products that securely meet customer needs. What’s more, this job is in demand; you won’t have a problem finding a vacancy to fill. Sounds pretty great, right?
Sum It Up
In this module, you’ve been introduced to the goals of technical project management, and learned more about the importance of collaborating across security, product, and IT teams. You’ve also discovered the responsibilities and skills of a technical project manager.
In the next module, Technical Project Manager Responsibilities, you learn how to brainstorm, plan, and schedule a project, as well as how to execute the project and manage the budget. You also learn how to take over an existing technical project. Interested in learning more about cybersecurity roles and getting to know security professionals? Check out the Cybersecurity Learning Hub on Trailhead.
