Ask HN: Skills required for a good tech project manager
He's got a lot of experience in journalism/publishing as an editor (in the management sense) and already has a lot of applied, down-to-earth project management experience on large, busy titles. (ie, he's got an excellent track record for getting things done, rather than just having been to lots of managementspeak courses and shuffling Excel documents).
So, I don't doubt that he's up to the job in terms of organisational skills, but he's obviously aware that he's not got a software background. He is above-averagely computer/web savvy, and has researched written and/or edited some tech-lite white papers in the past. I reckon he could get up to speed with what he needs to know relatively quickly, in his own time, before trying to make a move.
But what would HNers say is essential sector-specific knowledge that he'd need to be a good tech PM?
My list so far includes:
* Scrum, Agile and familiarity with waterfall (so you know why to avoid it)
* web standards, incl HTML5
* web accessibility
* awareness of testing/QA approaches (TDD, unit testing, browser-based macro testing, acceptance criteria)
* job ticketing and task tracking (ie, a step up from manual/offline progress tracking)
* a good understanding of the full web stack (conceptually, not hands-on hacking)
* but.. basic Unixery (for pushing releases live/restarting servers in emergencies)
* good channels for learning about what's new and interesting (and therefore may be stuff clients ask for, or would like to hear about)
What else would you recommend?
Cheers, Steve