| February 2006 |
| By Dean Briggs |
Financial Services IT depends heavily on software project management training, skills and experience. We especially value your ability to develop and manage diverse teams. Your team members will include Sales and Marketing, Business Operations, Compliance and Legal, as well as the traditional IT skills. The more you know about your company’s business, the better. We value your ability to develop trust relationships, communicate with customer service associates and senior management, work at a flat-out pace when necessary, and convey your upbeat, optimistic attitude to others on your project team.
Here’s what we look for:
- PMP
The credential is increasingly important, but best when it is backed up with solid experience. It gives you a foot in our door; it’s a sign of your commitment to the field.
- Team Management Experience
Have you managed a functional group? Prior business or technology team leadership is great background for Project Management.
- Matrix Management
How comfortable are you with managing people who don't report to you? Not everyone is cut out for this – it’s the opposite of command management. You have to be good at persuading people to work on your project, to set your priorities above others, and help people solve their problems so they can focus on yours.
- Best Practices Experience
We heavily favor people who have worked in best-practices shops using CMM, Six Sigma, and other quality improvement approaches. If you have to make a resume-building choice between an edgy startup with no methodology, and an established shop that has a heavyweight project management methodology, do your time in the established shop. It will help you in the future, when someone asks you to set up a project management methodology for the first time.
- Programming Experience of Any Kind
Have you been in the development trenches, can you "talk the talk", and understand the challenges? If you have lived the software development lifecycle, you’ll have an edge in IT project management.
- Technology-Specific Experience
A lot of us came into IT through the dot-com door the past few years. Don't be afraid to take a job working with unglamorous legacy technology if it gets you into a company you want to work for. Despite the growth in services architectures, J2EE and the like, most financial services institutions are running on anvil-solid mainframes and point-to-point connections that have been in place for years. The new technologies projects are glamorous, but the meat-and-potatoes is integration across heterogeneous platforms, including mainframe, client-server, and web. Integration has special challenges, and it’s good to gain that experience, as it can take you many places.
- Temperament
Can you keep your cool when others are losing theirs? Can you calmly shift your team to Plan B when your new server tumbles off the loading dock? Everyone’s looking to you. Can you work with the sales manager who's waving an SVP over your head like a club?
If you have some combination of these experiences and talents, and are willing to learn more, there's a place for you in Financial Services IT Project Management.
Dean Briggs is a Boston-based Project Manager who has worked in a variety of technology and financial services firms.
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