I agree. World War Z (the book) was one of the best books I've ever read. Several dozen characters and each had their own voice. It's hard for an author to make each character an individual. For many authors, most of the characters are all the same, basically the author but each with a different name. But in World War Z, Max Brooks made each character different. Some heroic, some cowardly, some craven, and many ordinary people just trying to get along. But the movie was just another zombie flick. Why?

Project Information Manager is an emerging field, that at some companies gives folks with an IT background a new and interesting field to play in, recieve a top wage, and be immune from outsourcing (in fact PIM's manage outsourced projects). PIM is popping up spontaneously in many different industries from heavy industrial engineering, to building construction, to public works projects, to archeological sites in africa. In industrial engineering, wherin I toil, the job title popped up about four years ago. If you google for 'project information manager' you will see three engineering firms, Flour Daniel (a US-based firm), AMEC (a UK-based firm), and Colt Engineering (from Canada). But all heavy industrial engineering firms have a similar role. The beauty of this job is that there is yet no accepted industry-wide definition, so you will have greater opportuinty to affect its evolution. At Flour Daniel the role is generally filled with people from an IT background. At Colt they take a mix, with some of them having an IT background

Basically, a PIM manages the information in a project. In industrial engineering, we use lots of very complicated software packages that were not made to work together, and try to make them work together. Industrial engineering is complicated. IT projects are complicated too, but when idustrial engineering goes wrong, people die. Industrial engineers have to design plants that take some raw commodity (say, crude oil) and turn it into other stuff, all without blowing up and killing people. And with complicated controls so the refineries can run efficiently with fewer and fewer operators. All in an environment where people are constantly changing their minds. And every year we have to do it in less time. Oh, and did I mention 'without blowing up an killing people?'

Critical to this actually happening is the timely flow of information between various flavours of engineers. What we are after is that when some engineer keys in some data, it never has to be rey-keyed by anyone. (Traditionally we would issue a drawing or specification and downstream disciplines would rekey it all again for their own purposes.)

To me, there is no greater pleasure than taking information from one application and figuring out how to bring it into another application so people can just use it. This is win-win for everyone, since the interesting part of industrial engineering is the "designing"--deciding which things go where and in which way. Checking (and re-checking) to make sure you've kept up with the continual changes is boring. So when the PIM does a good job, everyone is happy.

What's in it for IT folks? Being part of something bigger. Being part of being able to do something better. Oh, and working in an industry segment that is making a bazillion dollars that can afford to pay top wages.

Outsourcing? Well, it happens in industrial engineering too. But if the project has an American partner, it is usually coordinated from America, and someone has to make sure all the applications running all over the Earth are working together.

In the US talk to Fluor Daniel. Colt Engineering was recently purchased by Worley-Parsons (an Australian firm) which has offices in Houston. Also try Bechtel and the Shaw group.