Dec/090
Project Manager’s Survival Guide
I have been struggling with this problem of having loads and loads of things to do, and I’m sure I’m not the only manager who has the same problem. To give you an idea of what I need to do let’s take a closer look:
- Manage multiple projects (5+)
- Support five business guys (one at US, two at Asia and two at Europe)
- Run team of around ten developers (one engineer at China)
- Support our customers
Now, how do you survive when you have multiple projects, business guys and a middle-sized team to run?
Supportive Project Managers
You do not have enough time to concentrate nor do everything. This brings us to the first thing, get some help. You are still a human and you have limited resources on your own. Figure out the key people from your team and discuss with them whetever they would like to participate on helping you with the management burden. The most important tasks for these supportive project managers are in short, keep the ball rolling and report the status and issues to you.
Now you have more resources to handle the management burden, but a) you need to coordinate, b) you need to train the new project managers, c) you cannot overload them with the management work, d) you still are responsible for the outcome. Let’s take these one by one:
a) Arrange weekly management meeting to coordinate the projects (on a small team you most likely share the resources so this is very important), to discuss the most important issues, and to get reports from the supportive project managers.
b) Write down the common guidelines how the supportive project managers should work, i.e. Project Handbook. This document should cover the whole process: how the weekly meeting works, how to manage the projects, and so on.
c) Give your supportive project managers only one project to manage. That project should be familiar to them – they already know the project so it is easier to start managing it.
d) As you are responsible for the outcome it is not enough just to track the projects on the weekly meeting, you need to give guidance to the new project manager and still be in touch with the customer.
Prioritize
Another thing that you need to do as soon as possible is to prioritize your work. Now this is pretty simple: customers first, you cannot afford to loose them, if you do, soon you won’t have anything to manage. Next thing to do is to figure out and prioritize the most important issues on the team, if there are none, then move to supporting business guys.
Conclusion
Well, now you know at least a couple tricks how to handle a bad situation. Remember, do not burn yourself down, if you do that, there is not one to manage anything anymore: you are more important than anything above! Thinking about hundreds of different things each day will burn you down if you don’t find time for yourself to relax. Trust me, I’v been in the both ends.
