Organizational Hierarchy

If you want to buy the project management book mail [email protected] for more details or call any of our book shops MUMBAI-22078296/97/022-22070989, KOLKATA-22826518/19 HYDERABAD-24756967,24756400,BANGALORE-25587923, 25584641,AHMEDABAD-26421611,BHATINA(PUNJAB)-2237387,CHENNAI-28410796,28550491,DELHI/NEWDELHI-23254990/91,23325760,26415092,24691288.If you want to write to the author directly email at [email protected]

Note: In small-scale and mid-scale software houses, chances are that they expect a PM to be very much technical. But in big software houses the situation is very much different, interview are conducted according to positions applied for.... Unless the interviewer changes the rule.

Note: There are many small and medium-sized software companies that do not follow the hierarchy ahown in the figure above, and have their own adhoc way of defining positions in the company.

So why is the need of hierarchy in an interview? “Interview is a contract between the employer and candidate to achieve specific goals.”

So, an employer is looking for a suitable candidate and a candidate is looking for a better career. Normally in interviews, the employer is very clear about what type of candidate he is looking for, but 90% of the time, the candidate is not clear about the positions he is looking for. How many times has it happened with you that you have given a whole interview and when you mention the position you are looking for... pat comes the answer, “we do not have any requirements for this position.” So be clear about the position right from the start.

When we say a project manager’s position it has lot of flavors attached. In IT companies we have seen project manager having the following flavors of positions.

All the above positions are flavors of project managers means during interview they will be asked questions of project management. So first let’s understand these flavors. Above figure 'IT Company hierarchy' shows how a software company is structured. Project manager questions are asked from team lead and above. So let’s understand the hierarchy from team lead to the top IT position.

Team lead: - They are expected to do 80% technical and 20 % management. They mostly look after senior and junior developers. If you are at this position and you want to be a project manager then you should be able to answer all basic project management questions. From my point of view this stage is a crucial stage where a guy has to decide that does he want to be architect or a project manager.

Project manager :- They are expected to perform pure project management activities like resource management , estimation , day to day reporting to top management , metrication etc. A project manager mostly handles one project and is responsible for all good and bad pertaining to that project.

Program Manager: - They lead a team of project managers or the other way of saying is that they lead a group of projects. They have a bird eye view of what’s happening on the project side. They are normally a point of contact for escalation issues for the project they are leading. They are also involved in interaction with end customer for contract renewal and customer escalation.

Senior manager: - They lead a complete geographical delivery unit. Mostly they are above program managers and one point of contact with the owner CEO or board of directors of the company. There are many fine versions of this position available like manager, Deliver head etc , but more or less the roles are same. One of the main responsibilities of senior manager is to ensure that projects follow SQA procedures and to ensure customer satisfaction. So normally SQA comes directly under senior managers in many companies.

Now depending on what you are looking at you should prepare yourself. The above hierarchy is a generalized one every company has his own tailored version, but more or less they fall in the same lines.

There are two important points which we wanted to discuss and you can face this problem when you are moving from one position to other.

Normally team lead position is a decisive making point for any individual. In a team leads role you are normally doing two kinds of activities one is the technical and the other is project management. But moving next level from here you need to decide do you want to grow as a full fledged technical architecture or want to go completely as a project manager. If you are thinking of growing in terms of project manager you need to go deep in to the same. You need to sacrifice your so called technical love (if you have it) and dwell more in to people issues, metrication, process etc. A word of caution team leads try to show of more of technical capabilities during interview rather than management skills. So when jumping from this level be careful and try to control your technical love.