1 week, 1 month and 1 year as a Project Manager

 

I’m feeling reflective this September after passing my 1 year anniversary at Arm (boy does time fly!)

I joined arm as graduate project manager and have been in the deep end since starting work on the Arm Compiler.  A complex project from a technical viewpoint but it also has a significant number of products, people and processes to manage.

Here are some of the key lessons that I have learnt over the past year.

1 week

Thinking back:

Following a fantastic two day onboarding event at the Tamburlaine hotel, I started my first day with a quick introduction to the team that I was going to be working with.  It was a time of meeting new people and fostering new relationships with project managers, engineering, support and product management.  

I also learnt that I was going to be spending the remainder of the week on an external course in order to become a Certified Scrum Master.  The course was fantastic and foreshadowed Arm’s commitment to providing continuous development opportunities for graduates at this early stage of our careers.

It was a great opportunity to meet a variety of people across my group while establishing early relationships with a number of people in my team.

1 month

Luckily, I wrote down some notes from this period.  Looking back, a lot of this still holds true:

Fundamental to project management is time management.  The complexity of large software project means you cannot do everything that you set out to do in a week.  Prioritising work and offloading tasks to the team is critical if you want to keep your head above the water.

People management was another early area that I got involved in.  There are a number of internal (product management, support, docs) and external (contractors, senior management, other groups) stakeholders that you will be in contact with.  It is important to understand the various personalities that will be involved in the project and how to best accommodate and respond to their concerns.

Process.  It creates overhead for any project but is necessary for teams working on continuous development projects to learn and improve with each iteration.  Process allows slips to be caught and holds people accountable.  If you can contribute to a process and improve it then you can add value… or you can remove redundant processes that are time sinks for the team.

The fourth major lesson I learnt during this month was respect.  Central to being a PM is being a facilitator.  You remove obstacles, connect people, organise chaos and make sure high-level goals are met.  This involves working with people who need to respect your insight and judgement. 

I think my greatest challenge at this point is understanding as much as I can about the people, processes and project so that I can contribute and help as early as possible. 

1 year

Over the course of a year a lot can (read: will) change within a project: people join/leave, requirements change, deadlines shift.  It’s a balancing act that requires constant focus and thought about what is around the corner.

Heated arguments will happen at some point during a project.  As a project manager it important to remain calm and think clearly during these times.  Listening to others while being pragmatic is essential to resolving potential escalations.

Managing a project is the easy part.  People management is complex and problems that arise here are often not easy to solve.  It will take time, multiple approaches and reinforcing your thoughts in order to change people.

Alignment is essential and you can never be too aligned.  Continuous communication to stakeholders and double-checking requirements removes unforeseen blockades later on, no matter how sure you are that everyone is on the same page.

Every meeting I am in I like to take brief notes that I can reread later on or send out as a summary.  This has removed ambiguity on countless occasions and prevented repeated mistakes.  Informal meetings are great for quick discussions but lack clarity and strong actions.   These notes have allowed me to cross reference and strategize important decisions.

People love progress. Nobody likes the thought of being stuck on a task/project for too long.  Extracting date and visualizing this to the team has been great for breaking down big goals and motivating people.

Early on I realised how important it was to have a strategy/plan for each goal.  Even though a plan is essential to the strategy of a project, influence and execution are significantly more difficult to figure out.

Effort/time constraints are fundamental to making decisions.  Management decisions aren’t binary (normally) and are used on the best available data at the time.  They should get better with time and the more reliable the data, the better the team can execute.

Enabling others to talk has been incredibly rewarding.  It is important to spot when someone wants to join a conversation but is not confident enough to jump in and interrupt.

Ingest information, structure it, communicate it. Repeat.

The team you work with are the most important factor for project success.  Having an intelligent and motivated team is critical and should not be overlooked.

Finally, I think the number of wins that you experience in management is significantly less when compared to compiling code or completing sprints.  However, the problem solving still remains and achieving the big goals brings tremendous satisfaction.