What are the criterias to become project manager ?

[Nakata kokuyo]

Good day All,

i'm developer and would like to steps forward in my career, can someone please advice what are the criteria that required to be a project manager ?

thanks

[Suresh Bansal]

The next logical step from being a developer would be a team lead / tech lead.

[Hong Anderson]

At least you must have knowledge about project management.

[Andrew Stellman]

The most important thing that software project managers do is plan the way that software projects will be done. Planning a project means figuring out its scope (what software will be built, and what work needs to be done to build it), time (how long it will take), and cost (how much money will be spent; most new project managers don't really deal with cost in dollars, but you can think of cost in terms of hours of programmers' time). And those three things -- scope, time and cost -- need to be balanced in order to produce the quality you need for your project.

So how do you get started with doing those things?

Obviously, Jenny and I think that buying Head First PMP and Applied Software Project Management is a good first step.

But aside from that, I think the first thing you can do is take a really good look at how your team builds software, and figure out what it is that you can do to make it better. What kinds of problems do you run across? Do other teams run into those problems? For example, do you find that you're constantly missing deadlines? Or that you keep finding that you build software that isn't quite right? Do you have meetings with your customers where they tell you, "Well, that looks pretty good, but shouldn't the software do this other thing too?" -- and that other thing is something you and the team never realized the software was supposed to do? Do you find that you have to tell your boss you need four weeks to do three weeks' worth of work, because unexpected stuff always seems to come up to blow your schedule?

Learn to recognize the problems, and then figuring out what tools and techniques you can use to fix those problems. Learning to put in place and successfully use those tools, techniques and practices is really hard. But figuring out what other people are doing just means reading and asking questions, and that's a really good first step on the road towards responsible, effective project management.