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How much subject matter knowledge should a project manager have?

“Project management processes are industry agnostic so you can manage a project in any industry on any subject matter.”

“The project manager should always have a high degree of subject matter knowledge.”

Those are two of the most common responses to this question when it comes up on the PMI forum on LinkedIn. The question will usually look something like this: “I’ve worked as a project manager in Healthcare for 5 years and am considering moving into IT to be an IT project manager. How much IT knowledge do I need to have to be successful in this role?” Based on the responses I provided at the beginning of the article, you will notice that the responses are nearly opposites. You have the camp who believes that a project manager can walk into any project in any industry and be successful. On the other side, you have the camp believes the project manager should be a quasi subject matter expert (SME). Like the answer to many arguments, I will lay out why I believe the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Just to make sure we are all on the same page, the subject matter expert is the go-to person or authority as far as knowledge on a particular subject matter. For instance, if you are building a third version of the “Flying Elephants” mobile video game for iOS, the subject matter expert could be the person who was the lead programmer for versions 1 and 2. In that particular case, the programmer would be able to assess how long tasks will take, what is possible in the system, and what some potential pitfalls are in the new version of the application. For all technical related questions and enhancement requests for version 3, one would expect that this person would have a lot of input into the feasibility of those requests. The project manager will also have a say as there are often other factors that need to be considered, but there will normally be a go-to person relating to domain specific knowledge (In this case, that domain is programming). Needless to say, it is a very important role.

In the projects I’ve managed and within the companies I have worked with, I haven’t really seen a situation where the project manager is the subject matter expert. I will explain why I believe that is the case in a little bit. The project manager is typically the go-to person for questions on the project such as scheduling, budget, scope, or status related questions. However, that project manager in my experience will defer to the subject matter expert when it comes to technical questions related to the specific subject matter of the project that haven’t been discussed in team meetings or haven’t been previously discussed with the subject matter expert. I think it is important to understand that there is a clear distinction between being an expert on status and project status versus being the authority on a particular knowledge area.

Every project manager leading a project should be an expert in the former. I talked about this in another post so I won’t go into it in a lot of detail here, but suffice it to say that the project manager should have a crystal clear vision on where the project is going and what is needed to get it there. You should absolutely be able to go to the project manager and get a fairly immediate answer when it comes to questions on project scope, schedule, status, and budget. A stakeholder should still approach that project manager with more technical questions, but as I noted above, expect that the project manager will confer with the team (including the subject matter expert) prior to providing a response to that particular question or request. While I can’t speak for all practitioners, I can tell you that when a stakeholder comes to me with their technical goals for a particular product I will never say, “Sure. When do you need it by?,” but rather I will get all of the information from the stakeholder and say, “Okay, let me discuss it with the team and see if we can accomplish this within the timeline and budget” or “Okay, let me check with the team and see if this is feasible.” Everyone wants to hear “Yes, of course,” but without the detailed knowledge that someone like a subject matter expert is, the project manager who responds in that way is setting themselves up for a frustrated stakeholder or a frustrated team.

If you are the subject matter expert (SME) on a project, the demands on your time will be high and fairly consistent. Can you do a complete and thorough job as project manager while still handling all of the demands of being the person on the project with the most knowledge about a particular topic? This means that you will have people messaging and emailing you regularly to ask you project related questions. While you are working on tasks, you will have team members coming to your desk asking you questions. In the normal flow of work, it is typically to have team members stop by and ask questions, but this would be above and beyond that and would include various stakeholders wanting to know where the project sits at that particular time. In addition to all of that, you will need to keep and record meeting notes, risk logs, and issue logs. You will need to manage the project plan and submit regular status reports. At meetings, you will be expected to not only contribute as the subject matter expert, but to also lead the meeting and ensure that meeting stays on track based on an agenda you created (and sent out prior to the meeting).

That’s a lot of responsibility thrown on one person. On a small scale project, I can understand a subject matter expert wearing both hats, but that usually occurs when many of the project management responsibilities are much less than what I outlined in the paragraph above. Outside of those small scale projects and as I referenced above, I have rarely seen it where a subject matter expert can balance both responsibilities. In medium and large projects, I’d have a hard time being convinced (based on my experiences) that the subject matter expert can handle both responsibilities. At some of the larger companies where I have worked, I have only seen it attempted one time and the individual who was wearing both hats on a small scale project was stretched to the absolute maximum and had to frequently work after business hours to get all of their work done. It was also a case where the traditional project management duties such as project plans and status reports were done in a very scaled down way. Even with a non-traditional and process that I would best describe as “project management lite,” that person had a really tough time balancing those responsibilities to the point that it impacted their work-life balance.

In addition to the subject matter expert being over allocated, there is another big factor that should be considered and that is a financial one. As an executive or senior manager at a company, how financially viable is it for your subject matter expert to be performing full scale project management duties? This would pull them away from their time performing tasks (which are very likely billable tasks) or providing valuable insight to those who are assigned the tasks. This is especially true with companies that run with a pretty lean team where resources are relatively fully allocated on a regular basis (whether that is “lights on” operational type of work or project based work). From a financial point of view, you want your high dollar earners (in the examples above, a senior programmer certainly would be considered one) to be working on billable (and technical) tasks.

On the other side of the argument, can you find someone who has never worked in IT and ask them to manage an IT project? Sure, you can ask them, but you should have the expectation that you will need to spend time to bring them up to speed and break down all of the technical language that is thrown around in conversations, emails, and meetings. Using my example in the beginning of the post, a very skilled project manager who has worked in healthcare their entire career could certainly manage project risks, status reports, meetings, and the project schedule. However, without being able to “speak the language” of a particular subject matter, it would be fair to expect communication to be challenged and thereby be slowed down.

A number of years ago, a friend of mine worked in the construction industry. He had a number of different pieces of construction equipment that either owned or leased for the different projects he led. One day I met up with him for lunch and he had just come from a job and had his equipment hooked up on the trailer on the back of his track. I said, “Oh, you have the bulldozer with you today.” He said, “Matt, that’s a front loader.” If I had been tasked to manage one of my friend’s construction projects, he could have expected to be needed to spell out a lot of construction specific tasks and likely explain a lot of the terminology. The time that team members spend helping me get up to speed on their terminology and the overall construction process could be time they could spend working on tasks. While I do know a lot more about construction today than I did back then, managing a construction project at that time would have been a challenge for everyone involved.

Since communication is such a major part of the role project manager’s play, it is important to note that a lack of subject matter familiarity is most likely going to cause serious challenges in that communication process, as I mentioned above in the construction example. If someone is talking to you about a task or milestone that involves a DMZ and have no IT networking experience, you are going to need that person to break down that task as well as all of the terminology for you. If you then have to translate what you just heard into a milestone or group of tasks in the project plan, it may be a challenge to do that if you don’t have a strong concept of what was being discussed.

I have worked in IT almost my entire career and have had an opportunity to manage projects in most sub-sectors of the Information Technology space, but even as someone who has worked in the IT industry for 12 years and has a degree in Computer Science, I can tell you that there are some highly detailed IT topics that take me a minute to fully follow. That’s largely due to the fact that IT is so broad and the sub-sectors within it are extremely specialized. My personal experiences are that even within IT that project management processes and even methodologies change from project type to project type. For example, I’ve managed networking projects that followed more of a Waterfall methodology while I have managed a number of development projects that have followed an Agile methodology. Despite some of the broad sweeping statements such as those I cited to open the post, these are very different projects to manage. Nevertheless, I can tell you that having a very broad background in IT has been immensely helpful in managing IT projects and being able to know what project calls for in terms of approach and then adapt processes accordingly if needed. If had had spent the last 8 years managing healthcare projects instead of managing projects across the entire IT space utilizing different methodologies, it would be challenging to step in and be successful.

As a consultant, having that high level of knowledge across most subsets of the IT space is expected. That doesn’t mean that I am going to come in and be the Exchange Administrator at Company XYZ. It just means that when the team members start talking about SMTP servers, personal folders, public folders, and IMAP that I know what they are talking about. On the flip side, that’s not to say that a company who is bringing on a new project manager on a full time long term basis wouldn’t be willing to train someone. However, as a consultant, freelancer, or part time project manager, the expectation will be that you can come in with minimal training required and are able to manage the project successfully. In order to do that, you have to have a solid high level understanding of the project’s subject matter. In many job postings, you will find that some level of prior subject matter knowledge is typically required. Specifically, if a job posting is looking for a healthcare project manager, normally at least a few years of working in the healthcare space will be required, if not a few years managing healthcare projects at another company.

To summarize and conclude this post, I come back to what I said in the initial paragraph – the truth lies somewhere in the middle. My opinion is that you need to have some subject matter familiarity (as opposed to being a subject matter expert or even close to one) with the topic you are managing to be successful and for the project to be run efficiently. If the team is having to spend a bunch of time breaking down terminology and tasks for the project manager, that is going to negatively impact the project in terms of efficiency and productivity. In the same vein, a project manager with no subject matter familiarity is going to have a hard time communicating those details to stakeholders and senior leaders.