Program Manager Abilities at a Glance

I was looking for some of my old job descriptions for Program Manager positions to help out a colleague. 

While I didn’t find them, I did find some of the questions that I have used to evaluate a potential Program Manager’s effectiveness:

Project Management

• ability to create a work breakdown structure (WBS)?
• ability to manage a budget?
• ability to organize scope in terms of incremental value?
• ability to cut scope to manage quality, resources and effort?
• ability to ship within short cycles? (1 month vs. 3 month vs. 6 month vs. 12 months)
• ability to get budget support from another group/org?

People/Team

• ability to work effectively cross group?
• how have you resolved design conflicts among a team?
• how have you verified user experience?
• lead a team through execution?
• ability to inspire people?

Technical Expertise

• ability to identify emerging and future problems/trends?
• ability to identify key technical challenges within a problem space?
• ability to identify and evaluate solution candidates/options?
• ability to identify appropriate guidance within a given domain for a broad audience?

Customer Focus

• ability to vet design decisions with customers?
• ability to build, organize and rationalize customer data?
• ability to organize guidance against user experiences?

Communication

• ability to sell an idea?
• ability to communicate technical concepts to individuals outside the internal development team?

Passion

• passion for the job?
• passion for making things happen?

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