I know this is just a joke, but I’ve recently become a project manager for the first time. I’m open to tips and suggestions.
I’ve really enjoyed it and have worked hard to give my developers everything they need as soon as possible. Otherwise I try to stay out of the way and do my best to shield them from the pressure that’s being applied on me to achieve deadlines.
I’d agree that anyone can ask for project updates, but I really do work hard to balance client demands with c-suite expectations and the realistic outcomes described by my developers.
Was working on a team of 4 people, each with a different skillset (frontend, backend, design, CMS). The project manager basically just told us what we have to do in which order, without explicitly telling us who or how someone should do it, which i think everyone appreciated and worked really well for everyone.
In my last role there was no project management, and the Boss just assigned random tasks to anyone, regardless of his skillset. One week i had to work on jQuery UI from 10 years ago, next week on some exotic server language with barely any documentation, no examples and no stack overflow help. His philosopy was “fuck your skills and preferences, everyone has to know everything!”.
Before I quit there was some meeting how everyone must now learn video editing, because the product documentation (still with IE 6 screenshots) was not updated anymore but instead we would teach and explain the product in videos “because tiktok is very popular nowdays”.
I always thought project managers were useless until I got a good one. Then I realized the issue was that most I’ve dealt with were as useful as this parrot
The key of a good PM is to know their job is to ensure you can do yours. My good PM had that internalized and his only goal was to remove obstacles for us… glorious times
So if I were to say, “I’m playing phone tag with the vendors liaison because all he does is poorly repeat what I ask to others inside the company”, my good PM would get on the phone with the vendor and get a list of contacts so I could skip the crappy middle man
Another time I said, the network folks don’t agree with the security folks on how to proceed. He would get everyone in the same room and get all ducks in a row, then let me know what the decision was.
If I said, I’m wasting half my day asking for availability to book meetings, he would ask who I needed to talk to and book everything himself
Just being forced to talk about how it’s going and what’s blocking can be helpful, so I’m glad you’re questioning for to be more useful, not doing a little rubber-ducking isn’t all bad.
I know this is just a joke, but I’ve recently become a project manager for the first time. I’m open to tips and suggestions.
I’ve really enjoyed it and have worked hard to give my developers everything they need as soon as possible. Otherwise I try to stay out of the way and do my best to shield them from the pressure that’s being applied on me to achieve deadlines.
I’d agree that anyone can ask for project updates, but I really do work hard to balance client demands with c-suite expectations and the realistic outcomes described by my developers.
Was working on a team of 4 people, each with a different skillset (frontend, backend, design, CMS). The project manager basically just told us what we have to do in which order, without explicitly telling us who or how someone should do it, which i think everyone appreciated and worked really well for everyone.
In my last role there was no project management, and the Boss just assigned random tasks to anyone, regardless of his skillset. One week i had to work on jQuery UI from 10 years ago, next week on some exotic server language with barely any documentation, no examples and no stack overflow help. His philosopy was “fuck your skills and preferences, everyone has to know everything!”.
Before I quit there was some meeting how everyone must now learn video editing, because the product documentation (still with IE 6 screenshots) was not updated anymore but instead we would teach and explain the product in videos “because tiktok is very popular nowdays”.
I always thought project managers were useless until I got a good one. Then I realized the issue was that most I’ve dealt with were as useful as this parrot
The key of a good PM is to know their job is to ensure you can do yours. My good PM had that internalized and his only goal was to remove obstacles for us… glorious times
So if I were to say, “I’m playing phone tag with the vendors liaison because all he does is poorly repeat what I ask to others inside the company”, my good PM would get on the phone with the vendor and get a list of contacts so I could skip the crappy middle man
Another time I said, the network folks don’t agree with the security folks on how to proceed. He would get everyone in the same room and get all ducks in a row, then let me know what the decision was.
If I said, I’m wasting half my day asking for availability to book meetings, he would ask who I needed to talk to and book everything himself
Just being forced to talk about how it’s going and what’s blocking can be helpful, so I’m glad you’re questioning for to be more useful, not doing a little rubber-ducking isn’t all bad.