Archive for the ‘project management’ Category
Keeping the team informed
One of the most important responsibilities that any project manager has to undertake is to track and keep on top of the status of each project. That is part of the job. If you are working on a project that involves multiple teams, make it a priority to know where everyone is on their tasks. Do it in a way that doesn’t continually interrupt their train of thought.
One way of keeping track of tasks is to display the progress of each task (hours remaining till task is complete) in a location that everyone involved in the project has easy access to them. This could be anything from a poster sheet to a whiteboard or even a persistent online message board – as long as it is big enough and persistent to contain all the important tasks that require tracking. Also, make sure that each member of the team understands the purpose behind these information broadcasting tools and encourage them to update it on a regular basis. A good time to update the whiteboard may be every time code is checked in to your source management system(svn / cvs / git).
In the long run if the boards are respected and honored for their purpose both the project management and development teams can spend less time on “figuring out where we are” and more time trying to figure out the next steps to take towards a successful launch date.
The difference between good and bad project managers
Throughout my career working in the web development industry, one of the most interesting aspects is the dynamic between the project manager and the development team members.
Developers can tell when they have a good project manager on board with them . They look forward to the chance of working with them. You are:
- comfortable and conversant with technology. Ideally you ought to have some technical experience behind you.
- you exercise courage and patience when interfacing with the business and technical personnel. You can handle whiny programmers, unrelenting clients, and the crushing weight of looming deadlines and you make it look easy.
- you are constantly looking for and communicating solutions to decrease the burden of the programming team. We understand that you’re not on the same level as the dev team technically. Get involved anyway. You’ll only sound stupid the first few times but you may be able to catch a glimpse of how hard the problem truly is. This also takes a bit of courage.
- you act as a buffer for the development team. Great project managers are resilient and don’t fold under pressure.
