Project Management is a "People Engineering" Job

In high school I spent some time exploring engineering as a career field. I had a very logical brain and I enjoyed solving puzzles and problems with a fair amount of detail and technicality. I went to a few engineering camps at a local college to get a better understanding of what the role might be like; for a year or two I had “civil engineer” on my brain as my most likely future job title. But ultimately I didn’t fall in love with engineering enough, and I closed the door on that path by going to a liberal arts college.

By the end of my first year of college, when I finally confirmed my areas of study (business communication and psychology), here was my career plan: I was going to be an event planner for the first season of my career, then switch it up and be a marriage counselor sometime later. I loved both fields for different reasons, and I figured a lower-paying, higher-stress, weirder-hours event planning job would be easier while I was single, and maybe later when I had a family I could work fewer hours, get paid more per hour, and have more control over my schedule as I helped people improve their relationships.

I’m now ten years into my career, and I’ve had none of these jobs. I’ve planned some events, but I’ve not had a formal event planning role, and I’ve certainly not worked as a therapist or an engineer.

I’m happy to say the reason is because I’ve discovered project management, and it’s been a better fit for me than any of them because it draws on the strengths and passions that previously made me interested in all of them.

We don’t often think of the same people when we think of those who would make good therapists and those who would make good engineers. They seem to be on opposite ends of a spectrum: one working with the depths of human emotion and relational dynamics, the other working with data and technical details to accomplish feats in the physical world. But whether I’m lucky or whether I just don’t fit a stereotype (and who does), I have an aptitude for working in both spheres, and I believe this is what makes me great at project management.

Do you also find yourself with the instincts typically associated with both therapists and engineers? Do you have a knack for both navigating relationships and solving detailed puzzles? If you’re in—or are exploring—project management as a career, then you might be in just the right place. I’ve come to think of project management as a “people engineering” job, and I’ll explain why to help you feel validated where you are in this field or help you see if it’s one you want to keep moving toward.

The “Engineering” Part of Project Management

Among those who work with project managers, the stereotypes I hear are usually something closer to those about engineers than those about therapists. People picture PMs insisting everyone “follows the process,” even when that process is difficult or feels meaningless to people who have to follow it. A good project manager can overcome this stereotype and prevent most people from experiencing them this way, but it’s true that we’re obsessed with process—and we should be.

A project exists to make an idea into reality, and the path from idea to reality is a process. Whereas engineers must design a solution to a physical problem, project managers must design a process that moves an idea into reality. Creating or customizing a process for an individual project makes up a lot of our actual work. We have many tools and components we can use to put a process together—methodologies, meeting types, software, schedules, diagrams, change and risk management protocols, and much more, just as engineers can use many different raw or composite materials in their designs.

And like engineers, we must achieve all this within many constraints. An engineer’s solution must still achieve its goal despite many limitations, and our projects must also achieve their goals despite limits on people, time, money, and other resources. This is the “puzzle” part of both of these jobs—most puzzles challenge you to achieve a goal but put limitations on how you can do it, and people do these just for fun! If you’re a puzzle person, yes, you may like engineering, but you may also like managing projects.

The “People” Part of Project Management

But I said I think of project management as people engineering, and that’s because a well-engineered process on paper doesn’t do much. It’s people—largely the project team but potentially also many other stakeholders—carrying out the process as designed that actually makes the idea become reality. You need a process so that people move in a direction efficiently, but you need people otherwise nothing actually changes.

And thus, as project managers, we need to be prepared to work with people who are functioning on teams and working toward a goal, and all the complexities and dynamics they introduce. People need clear communication, motivation, conflict resolution, a sense of fulfillment or purpose in their work, pleasant relationships with coworkers…all sorts of things that sound a lot like the domain of a therapist, especially one who focuses on interpersonal relationships.

We may not be directly responsible to provide all of these to the project team always, but the more we do—the more we make sure team dynamics are working well—the better our projects will perform. I am very thoughtful about how I can optimize the experience of each team member working on my project so that the project gets the best quality work from them (and, you know, because I care about them). I listen to their work problems and I look for solutions, just as I do for problems on my projects.

Making good team dynamics better may be a nice-to-have, but particularly bad team dynamics can stop projects in their tracks or make the quality of results unacceptable (if, for example, the team didn’t collaborate effectively). The more often you step into a bit of a therapist role to those around you, even at a simple level, the more consistently you’ll head off some potentially disastrous project results.

People-ing and Engineering Put Together

I think of myself as a people engineer most clearly when I’m developing a project schedule. Tasks need to be scheduled in a certain order, as many need specific other tasks to be finished before they can begin. I feel like an engineer (or like I’m solving a puzzle) when I lay out a large set of project tasks on a timeline.

But I also think about what each task assignee needs to do their work effectively—how long they need to do the task given the other demands they face, how they’ll get clear project information so they do their task correctly, etc. I need to be in tune with them as people to ensure these needs are met.

Technical factors can cause us to run ahead of or behind schedule. So can human factors. As a project manager, if I have the ability to interact with both sets of factors, I have the most options available to me to optimize project efficiency or rectify project delays.

And this is true in nearly every aspect of the job, not just scheduling. I read the details of a contract, but I also consider what additional communications will make people follow through on the important parts given that many of them won’t read it. I consider when a meeting needs to be scheduled relative to project work, and I invite the stakeholders that I expect to make the best collaborative decisions given their dynamics. I communicate project updates accurately, and I choose the communication medium—meeting, email, instant message, etc.—in which I think people will best absorb the information. At every turn I am considering both people and process, and how I might impact both to keep inching that idea toward reality in the most effective way.

Do I HAVE to be good at both to be a project manager?

I certainly won’t say you can’t be a project manager if you don’t naturally love being in the thick of both processes and relationships. If you’re driven by the same “why” behind project management that I am—that you get to be a critical force in bringing meaningful ideas into reality—then I also know you can push through the aspects of doing this well that don’t come as naturally to you. I also have the humility to believe that you could bring a different set of strengths into project management and potentially be a great project manager in a different way than I am.

But if you don’t love relationships and processes or have some natural ability around them, you might have a few uphill battles in the day-to-day experience of your job. And over time that can be a drain on your energy in a way that you might not find worthwhile for your overall sense of work-life balance.

I hope this description of a project manager as a people engineer gives you a clearer sense of what the role is like, what can make someone effective at it, and whether it’s a good fit for you. I can’t wait to meet all my people engineers out there in the field, managing projects by diving in with people and process, and making more great ideas become reality.