Are corporate IT project managers a commodity?

Submitted by projectation on Sat, 12/01/2012 - 20:33
projectation's picture

Though some industry reports indicate that IT project managers are still commanding some of the highest salaries, my feeling is that the field is becoming a commodity, especially with the glut of IT certifications including the PMP (I know the PMP is not an IT certification, but many in IT get it and currently is linked heavily with IT), though I still think the PMP certification is very important to get. 

Here's an excerpt from a detail post I wrote on the topic and welcome any opinions: 

"Are corporate IT project managers a commodity?"

With the depressed economy and lagging growth, compounded by commodification of IT systems and services, companies are now often looking for project management specialists that they can “rent” to perform planning, execution, and control of project tasks... 

To make matters worse, barriers to decent-paying IT project management jobs have increased with many organization now requiring some form of certification.  This has in turn created a glut of training certification providers that have become commodities in their own right...
 
So the pressure is on and the corporate IT project manager is becoming more and more viewed as a a bureaucratic cost of managing change.  The trend now is to reduce the cost of project management while maintaining basic services.  This is impacting those coming into the market as well as those who have been here for a while.
 
To read more, go to:
 
 
-Don Kim

 

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aarush78

Thu, 12/06/2012 - 03:53

Nice article and quite true in Indian context where supply of PM's have exceeded the demand by a huge margin and thats why there is a mad rush to go for PMP and ITIL to have an extra edge

projectation's picture

projectation

Mon, 12/10/2012 - 13:43

But now there is a glut of people with PMP and ITIL certifications that no longer give you an extra edge.  You can attempt to gain more edge by obtaining newer certifications, but that only perpetuates the cycle.

I don't have any solutions, but just making an observation on a trend I'm seeing.

Thanks for the reply and insight into the Indian market.

-Don Kim
Projectation.com

aarush78

Tue, 12/11/2012 - 04:17

Hi Don


Request you to keep posting these kind of useful articles


Regards


Puneet


 

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projectation

Tue, 12/11/2012 - 19:13

I'll post as regularly as I can.  Though the majority of the postings here are PMP prep related, it is what happens well after you obtain your PMP that is most important.

Regards,

-Don Kim
Projectation.com