❤ Welcome¶
This site contains information about being a project manager, running projects, and helpful tips!
Project Management Core Skills¶
Your role as project manager is to communicate with your stakeholders, clarify objectives, and set expectations. Trust your team to handle the details of each project task & communicate with you when there is an issue. Through direct communication & strategic approach to problem solving, you can provide solutions & help remove barriers for your team. This is where you add value!
★ ALWAYS Reference Historical Project Data - Your project may be similar to a previous project your organization has worked on. It is important to review how past projects were handled including the budget, schedule, project team, roles & responsibilities, risks, & communication plans. Review any past project documents that may help you plan your project, you can even search the web for similar projects to seek extra help.
★ Planning & Organizing - Figure out what the project is trying to accomplish - Gather requirements from teammates or customers - Run kick off meetings - Create project plans - Prioritize tasks and break tasks down into smaller steps - Delegate tasks to team members who can best complete the work - Help move tasks along.
★ Manage Tasks - Help manage tasks for team members - Communicate key milestones to the team or customers - Update all stakeholders on project progress - Follow through on tasks - Hold teammates accountable - Remove barriers for team and project - Conduct standups (what got done the day/week before & what needs to get done today).
★ Budget & Control Costs - Keep project on track and within budget: this is a full time-job because the project plan may change causing unexpected costs to arise.
★ Communicate & Escalate - Develop a communication plan for the team - Keep in regular contact with key stakeholders - Clearly communicate project goals and expectations, team member roles and responsibilities, and provide constructive feedback - When escalation is required try to approach management with both the problem and potential solution/suggestions.
★ Build Relationships - Treat others with consideration and respect - Make the decision making process collaborative: state the goals of specific deliverables and elicit input from the team - Create a safe space for team to feel included and share information - Check in with teammates on how they’re progressing & provide feedback on quality - Compromise on new deadlines when they can’t complete a task on time - Set up meetings for teammates who don’t agree on how to complete a task - Get to know your team and what motivates them to do their bast work. Learn how your team likes to receive feedback & how they like to receive recognition for doing a great job - Pull a group of people together who want to complete the same goal.
★ Be Flexible - Project Managers use different tools, techniques, and methodologies everyday - Change is inevitable, the more flexible project managers are the more successful they are - When planning projects, take external events (vacations/sick leave) & holidays into account - Plan for risks & find solutions in advance - Look at historical data & review past projects - Calculate float or slack (refers to the amount of time you can wait to begin a task before it impacts the project schedule.
★ Don’t be afraid to ask for help ★
Planning & Organizing¶
❤ Use an abundance of productivity tools & create processes
❤ Planning and scheduling software (templates, workflows, calendar)
❤ Collaboration tools (email, collaboration software, dashboards)
❤ Documentation (files, plans, spreadsheets)
❤ Quality Assurance tools (evaluations, productivity trackers, reports)
❤ Create plans, timelines, schedules, & other forms of documentation to track project completion
❤ Maintain those documents
❤ Monitor & manage budget.
❤ Track issues & risks (find ways to mitigate risks)
❤ Manage quality
❤ Remove unforeseen barriers (when needed escalate issues to secure needed resources to move forward with the project)
❤ Manage tasks, keep track of tasks, update stakeholders on progress, and keep tabs on everyone’s work
Focus on the Customer & Team¶
❤ Project managers can add value by building relationships, make sure the team is heard and satisfied with the result. Understand the team’s motivation, strengths, and weaknesses. To build the right team, consider the skills and resources needed for the project. Allow the team to have input, ask questions, and address their needs ASAP. Clearly understand customer expectations. Write/gather requirements for customers and translate information into documentation for engineers so they can implement it. Manage timelines, tasks, understand all the pieces of who needs to be involved.
Build the Project Team¶
❤ A successful project manager sees the impact of each process within the project and communicates them to the team. This ensures that everyone working on the project understands their tasks goal as well as the bigger picture. Allow the team to understand the why in the project and encourage them to be innovative.
Plan out a checklist of ideas to talk about
List objectives
Ask everyone’s opinion on the best way to get it done
Come up with a plan by gathering resources, tools, and materials
Conduct weekly/monthly check-ins to list accomplishments, show progress made, show goals needing to be met, and provide a timeline
Create systems that turn chaos into order
Communicate & listen - ensure everyone is on the same page
Promote trust & Psychological safety
Demonstrate empathy & create motivation
Delegate responsibility & prioritize
Celebrate success
Teach & Mentor¶
❤ Take time to fully explain the expectations of the project and eliminate rework, confusion, and frustration. Help team exceed their own sense of personal potential.
Hold team members accountable for their assigned tasks
Ensure that issues/risks are tracked & visible to the team and establish escalation paths
Understand & help teammates to adapt to the right workflows & project management styles
Collaborate with other teams at the organization to deliver solutions that meet the requirements based on project, scope, and budget.
Leadership & Management on Teams¶
❤ Create, implement, & improve: standardize, measurable, repeatable & scalable workflows/processes for your team (i.e. You might set up a process for how & when a teammate should let you know they’ve completed a task)
❤ Regular team meetings & status emails Regularly connect with individual teammates - understand their unique communication styles. Ask people on your team how they prefer to communicate. (i.e. create small talk with those who enjoy it or get straight to the point with colleagues who prefer not to chat.
❤ Conduct weekly status meetings, daily standups, schedule time for open, thoughtful & inclusive discussions You might model this by asking for help solving a problem that is impacting the team. Encourage contributions from all team members regardless of their roles or rank.
❤ Create motivation by being present, listening, & asking questions. Avoid making assumptions about what someone is thinking or feeling - remain quiet & curious to learn more. - Recognize a job well done!
❤ Work with your team to build consensus around priorities, explaining your rationale can help you get buy-in & increase their commitment to work. Help the team understand why those tasks are a priority to you.
❤ Celebrate big & small wins - boosts teams’ engagement. (Small gift, team lunch, email)
Promote & value honesty, justice, respect, community & integrity.
Be dependable
Diligently engage in project updates
Set expectations & how to meet those expectations - set structure & clarity
Voice the impact of their work within the team, project, & beyond it - show them why their work matters
Clarify Goals
Measure Progress
Get teams with the right skills for the project
Be direct & concise - Avoid extraneous details & explanations
When communicating tasks or project goals, make sure to define key items, such as budget, deadlines, quality requirements, or important resources
Encourage team to ask questions & clarify information
Show team how much they’ve accomplished to help keep them motivated
Ask team if they anticipate being finished on time & if not, how can you help them succeed
Track progress by documenting when tasks & goals are completed. Let team know if it’s on track or not
Communicate success, delays, & issues
Make team feel psychologically safe - allow them to take risks
Give teammates meaning
Recognize everyone’s value no matter how small, each step of the way!
4 Types of Project Meetings¶
❤ When conducting meetings make sure they are structured, intentional, collaborative & inclusive. Provide a clear agenda, attendee list, and take detailed notes (maybe ask someone else to take notes for you). After the meeting send a follow-up email to all attendees’ include a summary of the meeting and any action items: use bullet points, labels, and hyperlinks in your email.
❤ Project Kick-off Meeting - The official beginning of a project & serves as a way to align the teams understanding of the project goals with actual plans and procedures.
❤ Status Update Meetings - This category includes regular team meetings where the primary goal is to align the team on updates, progress, challenges, & next steps.
Overall project health
Tasks updates - accomplishments
Schedule status
Budget status
Scope status
Risks - changes, resource issues, vendor issues
Action items - wrap-up the meeting
❤ Stakeholder Meetings - The goal of a stakeholder meeting is to get buy-in & support. Sometimes one-on-one basis or sometimes in groups.
2-5 min - present project updates
Seek out & listen to feedback
Help make a decision or resolve major issue/s
❤ Project Reviews - The end of the project, the end of a project phase, or the end of a significant milestone is an opportunity to review how the project unfolded. Conduct retrospectives throughout the project to review lessons learned about what is going well, what you can keep doing, and what can be improved. Celebrate project success!
4 Steps for Influencing People¶
❤ Influencing is the ability to alter another person’s thinking or behaviors.
Establish credibility - Why they should listen to you!
Frame for common good
Provide evidence
Connect emotionally - Help others achieve their own goals
Handling Ambiguity¶
❤ Keep calm
❤ Express empathy - let them know you care about the challenges they’re facing & are there for support
❤ Communicate what you know clearly - define the aspects of the project that are confirmed & will not change regardless of the unknown
❤ Make decisions and stick to them - try not to second guess yourself in front of the team. If you need to change course, clearly explain why
❤ Trust the expertise of your team - increase clarity by having everyone discuss what they already know or believe to be true about the project, such as what is involved in specific tasks or resources needed, based on their areas of expertise. Then discuss what you don’t know & brainstorm ways to gather more info
Project Lifecycle¶
★ Initiate the Project - This is the launchpad for the entire project: Gather skillsets required, timeline, & costs. Define project goals & deliverables, identify the budget & resources you’ll need, the people involved in your project, & any other details that can impact the successful completion of your project. Document all this information in once place to showcase the projects value & get approval to move forward.
❤ Documents created in this phase:
★ Make a Plan - for how you’ll meet the goals of your project. Breakdown of the tasks, ways to communicate, team roles & responsibilities, schedule, resources, & what to do in case your project encounters problems or needs to change. Make a project plan from start to finish. Outline the important deadlines, tasks for the project to be successful. Create a schedule to account for all the resources, materials, and tasks needed to complete the project.
❤ Documents created in this phase:
★ Execute & Complete Tasks - Project team has the job of completing the project tasks. Your primary task as project manager is to monitor progress, keep your team motivated & remove any obstacles that might come up.
❤ Documents created in this phase:
★ Close the Project - Celebrate all the team’s hard work! Make note of what worked & what did not, so you can plan better for future projects. Closing is a time for project reflection.
❤ Documents created in this phase: