What is project management?

November 12, 2008 1:14 PM

Amid brainstorming future job possibilities, I've suddenly got a bit of an opportunity at my current job. With the hope of keeping me around, I'm being offered an "on the job" project management position for the redevelopment of our company's website. What the heck does that mean?

I've got no background in web development, nor any experience in project management, though during my time at this company I've been intimately involved in an extensive software conversion project and have been a strong contributor to its success, along with a great team. Now that things are back to normal, I'm near terminally bored and my boss knows this. She wants to keep me around and thinks that I'd be a good fit.

All parties involved know they're getting someone with little to no experience at the job and are willing to train me as we go along. I'm definitely going to take the opportunity, as skills and experience are good no matter what, but what can I do with it down the road?

What's a PM's job like? What kind of opportunities may present themselves for future work? Any tips for coming out of the gate without tripping over my own feet?

posted by Pantengliopoli to work & money (6 comments total)

The PM's job depends on the company culture. For example, where my spouse works, a PM is a schedule jockey. Where I work, I am responsible for my product/project, I make decisions about the project. I have a hand in what happens with the product/project on a creative basis. I deal directly with our partners on the project's development. If you are at small place, the likelihood is that you will end up with something more like my job, at least according to my experience, which is really a hybrid product/project management role. I would not want to work at a place where I was just riding a schedule and had no responsibility for or relationship to the final product.

That said, PMing is pretty fun if you are good at it, because it usually does not feel like work.
posted by Medieval Maven at 1:51 PM on November 12, 2008

I have been a web manager. If you have never run a project before, it will be tough. Read some books, talk to people who know more about it (like you're doing here). My role was to do all the strategic, technical and functional planning, reporting, communication, contracting, scheduling, resourcing and reporting. It requires a lot of attention to detail and a vision for what you want to achieve several months down the track.

I did require web knowledge as far as I needed to know about trends, best practices, standards, technical stuff, but you also need to a form a team that will help you with that. Don't do it on your own.

Experience is really the best way to learn PM, so if you are keen to do it just leap right in and learn as you go. I find this kind of work really rewarding.
posted by wingless_angel at 2:56 PM on November 12, 2008

Having worked at one of the largest interactive agencies and now at a smaller software firm, I think I've seen both ends of the spectrum in terms of responsibilities/levels of craziness.

As someone who does not like scheduling/budgeting, I wouldn't wish a PM job on ANYBODY. It is basically your responsibility as a PM to get the project completed on time and on budget or under time and under budget.

That means...if your team is a bunch of screw-ups or if some poorly planned aspect of the project causes and unplanned delay/expense, you are the one who takes responsibility for it. I personally am a bit of a control freak with my work and do not like the feeling that my performance hinges on people whom I have no decision making power over in terms of whether or not they are on my team.

Expect lots of stress, lots of spreadsheets, lots of late nights, and little thanks.

Now, there is a flip side and it does indeed depend on the company culture as Medieval Maiden said. Right now, while software projects at my company have their own PM, not everything does. I am responsible for maintaining/updated/rebuilding all of the company's websites and the only PM involvement has been monitoring the usage of the developer resource because they are a shared resource. I have to do everything else on my own which isn't horribly stressful for my low-complexity projects, but depending on the scale of your website it could be a big one.

You'll need INCREDIBLE attention to detail as you are also ultimately responsible for any errors/typos/glitches in the project and need to have a good understanding of how to allocate the company's resources to effectively drive the project forward.

Good luck...you'll need it.
posted by Elminster24 at 3:43 PM on November 12, 2008

PM'ing is a mix of knowing what needs to happen, how it will be accomplished, when everything is due, and who is responsible for each piece; making sure those things happen in a timely manner and by the correct people; identifying issues that could impact the schedule (or are already doing so); clearing barriers; adjusting the schedule for slips and changes; keeping everyone in the loop, motivated, and on task.

Generally. As others are saying, it depends on the company and its culture.

A couple of resources that'll help:
DK Essential Managers Series: Project Management
Idiot's Guide to Project Management (yes, really)
posted by batmonkey at 4:17 PM on November 12, 2008

Honestly? I've always wondered what the big deal was about Project Management. It's basically making a list of your resources, budget, timeline, and building a schedule around that and keeping to it. Is that supposed to be hard? Anyway, that's the job.
posted by xammerboy at 4:32 PM on November 12, 2008

I'm a project manager and I've been one for a few years. One of my favorite things about project management is that everyone has a different idea of what it is. While there's some basic agreement about what goes on, it's largely choose your own adventure. In my opinion (and Joel Spolsky's) project management (or really _all_ management) is about smoothing things out.

As an example, one of the things I always make sure all the developers know right away is how to answer that most common question: what should I be doing right now? You don't want your developers wasting time thinking about what to do, you want them to be doing it. Finding out what to do next should be as easy as breathing. One mouse click, at most.

Of course, since Spolsky's already written a big ol' article about it, I'll just link to him.

I will say that probably the biggest challenge you'll face will be from your lack of web development experience. It's hard to anticipate the needs of your developers when you don't know what needs to be done next. Pay close attention to your developers. Every time their doing anything other than coding, they've identified an obstacle that you should remove for them.

Good project managers are hard to come by. If you turn out to be good at it and enjoy it, there are _many_ opportunities.

On preview: @xammerboy, that's like describing rock climbing by saying all you have to do is reach out, take the next hold, and pull yourself up. Simple and easy are not the same thing.
posted by systematic at 4:38 PM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]