Breadth Over Depth: Which is Better in 2020?

Breadth Over Depth: Which is Better in 2020?

Andy Jordan

– November 4, 2020

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at andy.jordan@roffensian.com. Andy’s new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

I recently presented to a group of project managers about some of the changes I see happening in project management. One of the questions that came up was about the ability for project managers to move across disciplines or business areas. Was that something I considered possible or desirable, or is it better for PMs to specialize?

This is a question that was being asked when I first started managing projects, but in today’s very different world of project delivery, it’s worth exploring a bit more to see what’s changed.

What is a project manager?
Historically, the debate was about whether PMs needed to be an expert in a particular vertical. When I started managing projects, PMs were starting to be seen as general managers who had a distinct set of skills that could be applied across a number of different business areas.

At the same time, there were a lot of project managers—particularly in IT—who had a background within the discipline that they were now managing projects for. For example, I worked with IT PMs who had been developers, solutions architects and systems analysts before moving into project management—often having first been business analysts.

The argument for having this deep experience within a particular specialty was that the PM understood the details and nuances of the project and could therefore make better …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.

Published at Wed, 04 Nov 2020 05:00:00 +0000