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”.
There’s some good advice below. I’m not a programmer (vastly different field), but the most important things you can do are to:
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get to know your technical people; their skills, and their personalities
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trust your technical people when they say something is difficult to do.
These two steps will help you get a lot of ‘good will’ from your team and make them feel like you’ve got their back.
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12 year SDE + 12 year TPM vet here.
Do everything you can to help your software engineers (or whoever is doing the work) have as much focus time as they need. Buffer your meetings and questions to one chunk of time per day. Encourage them to block-out and protect their focus time. And encourage the team to keep office hours so they can still make themselves available to others, but in a controlled way.
Be transparent with the business’s goals and frustrations you are facing. There’s an attitude (often among inexperienced devs) that PMs are good for nothing; just an interface to the rest of the business, and a source of where tasks come from. And some certainly are that, but a good PM is worth their weight in gold.
Find a good mentor, and start thinking about your next career step now.
Really good advice, thank you.
Happy cake day! I didn’t know there is cake day in lemmy
Do retros every week or two and use them to improve the process. Best way to learn from others.
Any roadblocks? Any roadblocks? Squaaa, any roadblocks?
C-suites exist to be roadblocks (and money sinks). Part of me thinks these CEOs profiting off layoffs need to be jailed, much in the same manner Iceland jailed the bankers in 2008.
If it listens and nods to the unedited, director’s cut version of my woes and frustrations, I’ll give it a cookie.
If a parrot is on its perch, can it lead a standup meeting?
I’d use an ai project manager I think. It could nag me via a push msg on my phone every day to ask for updates and info about time-frames. Which I would provide, then it could like do some shit. Create some gannt charts and progress tracking.
Would be nice to stay on track with stuff I want to do
