Archives for February 2014

I analyzed the PMI Salary Survey results. The eighth edition was released in 2013. I wanted to analyze the change in PM salaries over time. I have surveys from 2000, 2009, 2011 and 2013. I wish I had surveys from other years but the internet has failed me (PMI, too) and I can’t find them.

At first, I looked at the median salary for all PMs in the U.S. over time.

That makes sense – salaries have gone up. But median salary is too broad. Next, I looked at median salary by years of project management experience. The Survey says this is a bigger factor on salary than years of overall experience.

Again, salaries have increased over the last 13 years.

Or have they?

As the chart title says, this is not adjusted for inflation. Even though inflation has been low, averaging less than 2.5% over the last 13 years, it still adds up. Here is the data adjusted for inflation (showing salaries in 2013 dollars).

Yikes! It shows that salaries have decreased over time, or, at best, remained flat! How is this possible?

I have two theories. First, perhaps salaries from 2000 are artificially high due to the dot-com craze. PMI just happened to survey PMs when they were receiving outlandish salaries. Second, perhaps the job title of PM has been adopted by many more people that are dragging the salaries down.

PM Salaries in 2000 Were Boosted by the Dot-Com Craze

While this phenomenon was true – I got a ridiculous salary offer in 2000 – I don’t think it was wide-spread and it didn’t last long. PMI surveys PMs across the U.S. – I doubt salaries increased much in Dubuque due to the dot-com craze. I don’t think there would be a large spike in salaries.

Plus, salaries tend to be sticky. Once you get a raise, you tend to keep it even if your company does worse in the future. If salaries really did go up significantly, I’d expect to see that impact for….ever. Again, that was true in my case. I got a large salary in 2000 and I continued to make more money after that with every subsequent job.

Conversely, maybe the salaries of 2009, 2011 and 2013 are artificially low due to economic issues.

Waiter, Actor, Project Manager

There’s a joke in Hollywood that every waiter or waitress is an actor. Perhaps the same thing is happening to PMs. Maybe the definition of PM expanded so much in the 2000s that there are many, many more types of PMs. The 2000 survey may have been weighted towards technical PMs – computer science, IT, aerospace and Defense, construction. Technical PMs in these industries make more money than other types of PMs. The later surveys may have included more PMs that managed marketing or investor relations projects. Or perhaps, these PMs are more accurately called business analysts. And, maybe, these types of PMs earn less.

The New Normal?

Or maybe, PM salaries have truly gone down. The U.S. Census Bureau shows that median household income went down about 2% between 2000 and 2010. My favorite economics blogger, Tyler Cowen, has written on The Great Stagnation. We PMs are not immune.

My colleague at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Thomas Lechler, did research on creating business value through projects. The paper, The Mindset for Creating Project Value, is available for free for PMI members at www.pmi.org. He argues the PMs should shift their mindset from the triple constraint to creating business value.

Here is Dr. Lechler’s hypothesis: projects measure success against the triple constraint: scope, schedule and cost. If a project did what it was supposed to do, on time and on budget, then it was a success. Business, however, don’t measure success this way. They are looking for other things such as increasing revenue, decreasing expenses, increasing customer satisfaction, and serving more people (for a charity, perhaps). It’s easy to imagine situations where these different definitions of success conflict. Microsoft’s Kin cell phone may have been a project success but it tanked in the marketplace. Apple’s iPhone could have failed each of the three project success measures but nobody cares because it created massive value for the organization.

Dr. Lechler compares PMs with a triple constraint mindset vs. a project value mindset. PMs with a triple constraint mindset will naturally force a project to its baseline. They want to achieve project success. PMs with a project value mindset are more likely to identify and pursue project changes that may negatively impact the project but ultimately benefit the organization. Interesting data and I encourage you to read it.

I must stress that it is critical that businesses select projects wisely and that PMs know the strategic business goals for the project. Usually, the PM is in the best position to know if a project is going to achieve business value.

Despite the headline, a PM should not ignore the triple constraint. But PMs must remember that projects are undertaken to achieve a goal and the goal is more may be important than the triple constraint.

Everyone multitasks. You switch from email to a project schedule to a requirements document within minutes, or seconds. You (and everyone else) brings their laptop to a meeting so they can crank out emails. Everyone multitasks, but most people aren’t good at it. Research from the University of Utah (here) shows that less than 3% of the population can multitask with no decline in performance.

To a degree, PMs know that people are bad at multitasking. We would rather have one person 100% of the time on our project instead of five people 20% of the time (assuming equal talents). Then we know what they are working on at all times.

There are certain tasks that don’t suffer if you do them poorly. Many of the tasks that PMs do, such as tracking task completion and issue tracking, don’t require a high level of performance. But you should be worried about your job if all you do is menial tasks that can be easily done while multitasking. Some of the problems that need solving are hard and require full attention. If you aren’t working on the hard problems, then you may not providing value to your organization. You are paid a lot and you should be spending a significant percentage of your time solving hard problems.

It’s clear that people should complete one task at a time. You and your team.