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Glad there's a thread for this. I recently discovered that Project Management was a field and I'm interested to see the tips and resources people share here. A bit of personal background: I went to college for Computer Science, hit a wall with the higher level calculus classes and changed majors to English, Creative Writing. Graduated, did some jobs as a reporter, gas station attendent, strip club emcee, and data processor before moving to a bigger city. I really had no idea what I wanted to do, was unemployed, and was really undervaluing my skills (I was the EIC for my college's literary journal and the Features Editor for the college paper, but I didn't think that was management experience or worth focusing on). I applied to a temp agency, called them when I knew there'd be an opening in a government call center, and from there I was hired on as a government employee, promoted to clerk of the call center, then to case worker, then to network technician, and now to Management Analyst II in our PMO. I spent a year working in the same IT shop as our PMO without having any idea what the team did, and once I did I made a beeline to getting off the helpdesk phones and into PM work. So far it's been great. I've been sent to a few PM seminars and read just enough of the PMBOK Guide to answer my interview questions, but most of the concepts seem really common sense. I understand that I probably wouldn't come up with the PMBOK if I was in a vacuum, but it's not like scope creep is an arcane concept. I'm heading up a project to build a specialized webpage for our C-suite and I'm second on a larger undertaking to upgrade our agency from Office 2010 and Windows 7 to 2016/365 and Windows X. This involves buying a bunch of computers, working with larger government agencies, and communicating everything to our staff. My problem, if I have any, is that our interim Deputy Director of IT is a moron. He was promoted from Helpdesk supervisor mainly because he has the most experience and charisma, but he will often make up answers to questions, say the wrong thing when describing an object, and can't articulate a big picture view of what his department should be doing. Is it common for your boss's boss to actively be a problem to your projects? I'm having a meeting with him and the rest of the IT leaders ina week or so to go over all the upgrades and dependencies so we can all be on the same page and working on the right things at the right time, but I know he's going to say a few nothing answers then hurriedly get up to "deal with an emergency", which means the other leaders will make a plan only for the director to bring up some unknown information a few days later that puts things back into flux. It's really disappointing because the former Deputy Director was a real legend and I'm still finding OneNote pages written by him years ago that are like nuggets of gold in that they are a wealth of information and resources. He left right before I was promoted, and if the interim DD gets the position officially it's pretty clear that he's going to make an example out of a PM who has been vocally critical of him in the past. Sorry, that's kind of a vent but this is the first time I've felt like Dilbert dealing with his boss, and I just want to know if I've been lucky leading up to this or what.
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Aug 1, 2019 17:01
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I have been roped into giving a presentation on ethics in the workplace and it is hell. I don't mind doing an informational, "this is our new software and this is why you should care" sort of thing but it's really pushing my comfort level to have to I guess preach to my coworkers about why checking FaceBook at work is wrong (I'm shitposting on the clock right now, I'm not the poster child for workplace ethics). It's due in a week or so, and I'm pretty sure it's far too late to appeal to my boss for relief. Anyone have do go through something similar, having to present something you felt unqualified for or didn't believe in, or presented in front of an audience who may be hostile to your message? My script is a lot of "our customers are real people and we need to respect them in the same way we would want to be respected" but I can't tell if I'm going to come off as a passionate member of the group or a young buck who was promoted out of the pits reminding line workers about The Rules. Ugh, I should have bitched about this weeks ago when I first realized what I was in for.
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Sep 9, 2019 13:16
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High Lord Elbow posted:First thing, you turn your chair backwards and sit down Slater-style so they know it’s a jam session. Then you say “Look, it’s 2019 and everyone is going to use the work internet for personal use sometimes, but jerking off to porn in your cubicle or playing FarmVille for eight hours won’t fly. What are some common sense guidelines we can all agree to that let us get our jobs done without feeling like we’re in prison?” I'll write up something that more casually addresses the reality of distractions in our connected age, and I'll make sure a school chair is available because I don't want to try sitting backwards on one of these office chairs.
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Sep 9, 2019 14:32
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I'm 7 months into my first job in a PMO and I'm the Project Manager of our agency-wide upgrade to Windows 10 + the adoption of our parent company's domain. It's... a lot. It's also one of three projects on my plate, and our PMO is just generally really stretched thin right now. We have a new director over the PMO and common wisdom says he's trying to phase us out of existence, but before he can do that we need to finish this upgrade. Oh did I mention it needs done by Jan 14? Or that several key resources are on vacation for significant chunks between now and then? Or that our IT department is filled with people who just kind of learned on the go (myself included) and lacks much of anything in the way of formal knowledge or experience with systems administration or network ops (aside from a few heavy hitters who we have to dump all the work onto). I wish I was better about documenting things according to best practices. Not everything, sure, but I tried using MS Teams for this one since we have resources at different agencies contributing to this and it's not quite ideal. I feel like I should have a more fleshed out risk register and task list, to say nothing of comms plans, but my PMO mentors haven't seemed bothered by the lack of that stuff until yesterday. I was in CAPM training and got an email from my boss saying that the Sys Admin was looking for a doc that didn't exist. If we had more time I think it'd be an easier project to handle but I'm really feeling some of my inexperience catch up to me. Nothing I can't handle; sys admin was fine when I talked with him and we all have the attitude of "we're going to do what we can do" which is much better than "this is doomed and it's going to suck". I might not have the best documentation skills but I'm a pretty good communicator, and when I'm not up to my ears in online classes I can keep information flowing. Just venting, no moral.
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Dec 13, 2019 19:55
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The Berzerker posted:delete the words "right now" and welcome to the rest of your hellish existence, my friend I’m gonna take the CAPM test soon to better my chances of getting a better job, and my real fear is not having a PMO at my next place. I’ll take one that’s stretched over having no PM support
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Dec 14, 2019 01:31
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This is a bit of a rant, but I want to compare experiences for a second. I just joined my agency’s PMO in May and I really enjoy the work for the most part. I can see myself making Project Management my career, but not here. Brief backstory: I rose through the ranks starting as a temp in the call center through network technician and landed as a Management Analyst in the PMO, which is under IT. I am now in charge of our project to replace 700 workstations with Windows 10 machines. That’s fine, and as I’m learning about the PMI best practices I try to stay on top of the planning, documentation, and communication for the project. However, due to some deadweight in the Helpdesk/technician side of the department, and the lack of Helpdesk supervisor to manage it, I’ve also been doing a lot of technical work related to the project. Like personally testing software on the computers, running training/initialization sessions for all the staff, delivering and installing hardware, and troubleshooting problems as they arise. It’s a lot, and it eats into a lot of what I think I should be doing. As such I’ve been working (paid) overtime for the first time since I started with this company, and I feel a lot of personal pressure when unforeseen problems come up because maybe I didn’t do enough. Learning more about the job academically, think I should be able to delegate these tasks, but there’s no one to delegate to. I don’t actually mind the technical work because I’m a) used to it after a few years doing it as a job and b) I’m a decent teacher for the sessions, but I have a lot of other things I have to do. This isn’t even my only project! Is this sort of situation common? Not specifically with tech, but any field? If there’s a project and part of the work involves, say, calling customers, is the PM likely to be tasked with that? Or is it usually just assigning work out and receiving reports?
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Feb 10, 2020 02:52
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You want MS Project and you can get a key for it for like $20 through a goon: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3898368&perpage=40&noseen=1 I grabbed it along with Office and Win 10 when so built my recent PC.
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May 18, 2021 17:50
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Is there a decent resource for examples of completed MS Project files? There are plenty of templates but I was hoping for an example of one that was used through to completion. Templates don’t really demonstrate things like shifts away from a baseline and I’d like to see more examples of people’s WBSs. Obviously companies aren’t eager to release that sort of thing but maybe there’s a PM focused place that has examples beyond blank templates.
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Dec 6, 2021 13:27
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You can get a Certified Associate of Project Management cert with much less experience (it’s what I have). Even without that, see if your boss can pay for a PMP training class or something, those come with the PMBOK and will teach you a lot about the theory. Baring that, I suppose self-teaching is a way to go but I would try to find a video series instead of just barreling through the book.
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Mar 21, 2022 17:14
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I am very envious of PMs who have resources who actually deliver. Being able to say “you work on this task for two hours” and then get a completed task… unbelievable. I’ve had one bear of a project on my shoulders for a year and change. We had a contractor developer brought in for it, he did great work to get us 85% to close and then his contract ended and he moved on. Since the project was so close to the end, it was given to two of our in-house devs. That was in November. We are probably further away from finishing than we were at the beginning of the year because these devs seem to break something for everything they do, or it just takes them ages to “do”. It’s imploding, as I told my boss. The solution: . No solution, this is just our pace. If it takes a while that’s out of our hands. Add that the resources assigned to this also have other projects that they are making similar progress with, with a new priority job that’ll be assigned to them soon, and I get misty-eyed for a work culture that, idk, more accurately assessed the capabilities of their employees. When it takes someone two weeks to add a few columns to a spreadsheet I feel like that’s a problem. I’m know I not the greatest pm even in our department, but it feels like a problem out of my control and I just have to keep spinning small accomplishments for update after update. /rant LawfulWaffle fucked around with this message at 18:30 on May 31, 2022 |
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May 31, 2022 18:25
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How common are multiple interviews for PM positions? I have one for an IT PM role that would elevate me from a “management analyst doing PM work” pit but the HR person who called me to schedule the interview made it sound like this would be the first of a series and that the first one was more informal. Are technical assessments common? Should I brush up on memorizing all the inputs, tools and techniques? I have my CAPM and am planning on getting my PMP this year, but I don’t know if having a cert is generally considered proof of knowing the PM basics.
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Jan 24, 2023 13:18
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Dik Hz posted:Hiring managers care way more about practical experience. Nobody is going to grill you on the ittos. Be prepared to talk about examples from your past that reflect the different phases of projects. Communication is the most import skill a pm has so make sure to show your skill through professional communication at every opportunity. Thank you for the sample questions. I wrote them and my answers out as practice, and I’ll refine them as the week goes on. I could ramble about my “difficult team member” for an hour, but I don’t want to outright say “and that’s why I’m here today” I was asked to be an interviewer for a role similar to my own a few months ago and I was both surprised and encouraged by the generally poor quality of responses by the applicants. One was asked “what’s a project that you would like to revisit and what would you do differently” and they answered “I can’t think of any.” Hopefully I’m up against applicants of that quality. One thing nearly all the applicants asked about was the interview->decision timeline. Is that tacky? I didn’t have to answer it so it didn’t bother me, but I plan on asking it myself and I don’t want to be gauche. Or maybe it shows me as being curious about details, idk
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Jan 24, 2023 16:01
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