Dear Project Manager
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- Mojo
First in a series of letters I wish I could deliver in person.
Dear Project Manager,
Stop storing stuff in your head. Use your calendar. Figure out our project management system properly and ditch the Imaginary Schedule - create a real schedule and stick to it. If something changes, change the schedule.
Don't leave it until 15 minutes before a client meeting to figure out what the meeting is about.
Find out what other people with your job title do. Does your Job Title line-up with your actual role? Should it?
Ask yourself whether your being effective or not. If you aren't, learn from someone else how to be effective. Read a book, learn from others and make life easier for yourself.
Occasionally asking if a particular task is finished yet is not Project Management. Telling us what work we need to do is not Project Management. Forwarding client emails with 'FYI' is not Project Management.
Stop relying on yourself. You have a team who can do some things better than you - Involve and use them.
Clients know when you are blagging, and so do we. Your habit of stumbling over your words and falling back to 'urmm, umm, errrrrm' is completely obvious. It instantly erodes trust.
I'm sorry i called you Captain Alt-Tab, but you've earned the title.
Stop writing proposals and specifications for things and processes you do not understand. Copy and pasting from someone else's proposal found on Google is not good enough.
Proposals, scopes and other documents are not 'bullshit for clients'. Sometimes they are a little, but they are to keep us on track, and enable you to do your job properly (which is to ensure we do the right things, the right way, in the right time, for the right money).
Take the steering wheel back from the client. Get control of the things you should be in control of - meetings, decisions, projects.
In short: Your job is about making projects run smoothly (the right thing, right way, right time, right money). Learn from other people (read some books). Stop relying on yourself - involve us. Get organised - figure out your main tools and systems.
</rant>
- VikingKingEleven0
your project manager works with my project manager
- vaxorcist0
Hmm.. sounds like a junior project manager.... still malleable, slightly better than a know-it-all senior project manager who may think he gets it when he doesn't....
My best project manager ever was very objective-oriented, very experienced but not bitter, he did push the account staff to change the deadlines and he pushed the client without seeming to be pushy.... skills that he said he learned from long-term apprenticeship with his mentors, large scale project managers....
There are some Steve McConnell books, but more about software projects than what we deal with...