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I know what I'm about to say is part of PMing... but loving hell, vendors, appreciate that I occasionally want a straight loving answer without having to spend half an hour describing my project and all the use cases. I get it that you need to know the background but it's possible to take that to far and I know when I'm being fished for Professional Services hours. Did it really have to take that long to organise some relevant staff training for me and my team? Also, appreciate this thread is here because I moved into this role about 8 months ago and it can feel a bit lonely.
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Aug 6, 2019 16:19
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Heners_UK posted:I know what I'm about to say is part of PMing... but loving hell, vendors, appreciate that I occasionally want a straight loving answer without having to spend half an hour describing my project and all the use cases. I get it that you need to know the background but it's possible to take that to far and I know when I'm being fished for Professional Services hours. Did it really have to take that long to organise some relevant staff training for me and my team? Most of the good PMs I know are lucky to get "begruding respect" out of the engineers working their projects. Its hard to tell someone to deliver something at a precise time they didn't decide and them be like "yea sounds great, you're great".
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Aug 6, 2019 21:45
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CarForumPoster posted:Most of the good PMs I know are lucky to get "begruding respect" out of the engineers working their projects. Its hard to tell someone to deliver something at a precise time they didn't decide and them be like "yea sounds great, you're great". As a manager of an engineering group this is basically how we feel about PMs. They are either garbage and hinder the whole thing or they are good and just give out awesome (unrealistic) expectations.
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Aug 6, 2019 21:49
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Heners_UK posted:I know what I'm about to say is part of PMing... but loving hell, vendors, appreciate that I occasionally want a straight loving answer without having to spend half an hour describing my project and all the use cases. I get it that you need to know the background but it's possible to take that to far and I know when I'm being fished for Professional Services hours. Did it really have to take that long to organise some relevant staff training for me and my team? I have the tendency to ask the question I need an answer to without giving the full story and picture of where that question is coming from and I notice people are never able to answer it. Which I recognize partly is that I have been thinking about this issue for a while and have zeroed in on the missing piece that someone can fill me in on, but they have not been thinking about this at all and are completely confused or can't even recall the information. Mostly I do it because that is what I appreciate - a straight question that I can reply to without worry of any repercussion. After typing that I'm not sure if it's that relevant but I've decided people either don't know enough about what you are looking for and want to tailor the response or they are afraid of what the answer might mean for them, as if it's some kind of secret you're not allowed to hear. And yes, it's a lonely gig sometimes where you're talking to people often, but rarely exchanging ideas with a peer.
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Aug 24, 2019 01:08
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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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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?” If your boss gets mad you definitely work in a prison.
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Sep 9, 2019 13:39
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To show you're not in management's pocket: If you have 'cost-plus' projects where every hour each employee works is billed to the client with margin on top, tell your coworkers that working unpaid overtime is literally stealing from the company. (Because now the work has been performed but there were no hours and hence no margin billed to the client.) Furthermore, explain that unpaid overtime may not be reportable in the tracking software and would therefore screw up future projects' performance factors. Finally, remind your audience about the Walmart manager who sued and won for not being promoted when her peers were putting in unpaid overtime and she wasn't. Naturally, lump-sum jobs and bid writing are where employees are welcome to donate discretionary effort to the company's profits. But the company can't reward those people at the expense of employees who don't work unpaid overtime, or else they may get a suit like Walmart did.
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Sep 9, 2019 14:15
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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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Definitely go more casual - focus on how they help people, not that “entered into a contract” jazz. Otherwise, yeah just say that.
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Sep 9, 2019 16:12
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If you're government there should be a well established list of actual ethical concerns, like limits on gifts and not using your position to enrich your friends or yourself. Maybe find a way to correlate it with current events.
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Sep 9, 2019 16:54
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What’s on a good PM resume? I worked with a ton of different clients while running my own company for half a decade, and I’m looking for more metrics than people managed. I can’t just say I did projects early over and over, because then it looks like I misbudgeted time.
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Sep 9, 2019 20:06
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Golden Bee posted:What’s on a good PM resume? Food for thought: List impacts of the projects; dollars saved if it was process improvement, revenue increased, efficiencies gained, safety improved, etc etc What were the budgets and complexities of those projects? Any particular clients you want to advertise? Think about any challenges in them too, like risks that came to light and how you handled them or planned for them.
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Sep 10, 2019 14:26
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In interviews and resumes, I look for how they did what they did. It’s easy to hide in a PM role and contribute nothing. It’s also easy to spew unprovable results or claim others’ success as your own, but if you’d really saved your previous company five billion over four years you’d be hiring me, not the other way around. “Drove project execution by aligning with a cross-functional team on a credible schedule with proactive communication and regular updates to ensure focus on critical path tasks” makes me interested. “Managed twelve superwidgwt projects and improved cycle times by 80% while reducing costs by fifty golden rutabagas” does not.
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Sep 10, 2019 16:51
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I am looking to leave where I am now and I am having a hard time because I am either way over or under qualified for things. Most of what I have done has been small-medium sized projects in the medical communications field dealing with MLR (2 years ending in 2017) and now for software/custom websites (2 years) and I bounced around in media before that doing some PM stuff, writing, and sales. Both PM jobs were waterfall so I didn't have to worry much about calculating critical paths or drafting up some crazy schedules. Neither place used any software for resource allocation, scheduling, etc. I have gotten little meaningful SDLC experience... I have done a little documentation for the small sites we do but it's some awful hybrid of requirements and specs that doesn't make sense for either party and would be fairly useless at a better organized company. Any new software build is an absolute joke as far as how it's managed. This place wasn't even doing user acceptance until 3 years ago and the PMO is about as old. That being said, poo poo gets out on time, I tend to schedule and balance work pretty well despite garbage timelines and hilariously off estimates, I'm good at managing stakeholders, and I have a third eye for people who started working on something they shouldn't and are gonna blow up a timeline. Basically, I feel like I would potentially have problems in a more structured environment or running a large, complex project. Or at least a pretty significant learning curve. Am I just letting imposter syndrome get me or is that a legit concern?
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Dec 13, 2019 05:52
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I think there is an type of imposter syndrome unique to PMs. The accepted way to think about project management, whatever type it may be, makes it seem as if it is an exact science and an expert PM will have no ambiguity in there projects and no need to deal with something in a different way than is laid out in the certification literature. In reality it's all a bunch of BS. PM'ing is not an exact science at all and I've worked on projects and with PMs from a ton of organizations and I have never seen anything proceed as the PMBOK (or other applicable "source of truth") says it should. Organizations and people have flaws and resulting requirements that are unique to them. If being a good PM was just following the process laid out in the literature than anybody, including a computer progam, could do it. Good PMs are able to manage despite things being ambiguous, suboptimal, or just plain stupid. In my experience, when you get somewhere that has larger and more complex projects with an expected structure it turns out they are just as messy as any other project. I've worked with a few PMs that INSIST on every little thing following the exact best practice that applies to it and their projects end up being nightmares. A good PM knows when to bend so it doesn't break. D-Pad fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 16:47
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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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I'm a year into being a formal PM, although with a few years of PM experience before that (without the title). I assure you that the imposter sydrome is a shared feeling. If you must, get a few certs or do a few courses, put the certificates on the wall and remind yourself that you really do have the necessary skills. I absolutely agree that every organisation has quirks and quirks is a very broad spectrum term.
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Dec 13, 2019 20:17
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LawfulWaffle posted:our PMO is just generally really stretched thin right now delete the words "right now" and welcome to the rest of your hellish existence, my friend
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Dec 13, 2019 23:43
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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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So PMPs suck eh? How about lean sigma six ???
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Dec 14, 2019 20:51
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:So PMPs suck eh? A PMP is more valuable career wise than an MBA in most situations and easier/cheaper to get. It is required for a lot of PM jobs and if it isn't it will still put your resume in front of all the ones lacking it. It is definitely worth pursuing for those reasons, but as far as actual usefullness of what it teaches you it's not much in my experience. I learned way more actually working as a PM long enough to meet the requirements to take the test than I ever did from the material taught. It's more of a gatekeeping device that signals you've reached a certain level of experience and committment in your PM career than a learning one. I always encourage PMs to get it, just don't be caught up in PMI's self righteous bullshit. I don't have personal experience with six sigma or some of the others, but from what I have seen they aren't significantly different.
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Dec 14, 2019 21:33
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Cool thread. I've been a PM for a large complex facility for about 7 years. In truth my role is much more like that of a facility manager, but our threshold for "project" is any task with more that 20 hours of labour, hence the title. Also, my org doesn't feel like funding both an FM and PM position so I get to plan capital redevelopment projects while also hearing out managers on why they absolutely need every single white board in their department moved 4 inches to the left. Anyways, not being a formally trained PM I just want to say how great reading this thread has been. I report directly to a CFO and have exactly ziltch internal expertise to draw from. Would love to hear more from any construction or FM industry PM's (should they exist in this thread).
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Dec 18, 2019 05:57
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I run a business that does trail construction, and until now we've been working for the feds. I picked up a larger project working for a city, and I'm going to have a sub that I 90% trust. The job is larger than most we've handled so far but other than size it's nothing out of the ordinary. Until now though, I've been working for the feds and just had to follow the FAR with COs interpreting. The city provided me a sample contract agreement that they've used for past contracts, but the sub is already trying to demand changes. Some of them clearly reasonable, but others not so much. Is there a recommended book on change orders, sub agreements, generally accepted practices with regards to subs, project management, contract negotiation with the city pre-contract signing? Seemed like a good thread to start
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Dec 19, 2019 09:04
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weato posted:Cool thread. I've been a PM for a large complex facility for about 7 years. In truth my role is much more like that of a facility manager, but our threshold for "project" is any task with more that 20 hours of labour, hence the title. Also, my org doesn't feel like funding both an FM and PM position so I get to plan capital redevelopment projects while also hearing out managers on why they absolutely need every single white board in their department moved 4 inches to the left.
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Dec 21, 2019 13:27
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Dik Hz posted:We have a similar role on our team. My biggest advice: Find a good electrician sub-contractor and nurture that relationship like your job depends on it. (It does) We have two great electrical subs that constantly bail us out of bad situations. The one that specializes in high voltage live work is basically a gift from god. Where I'm from the economy is going gangbusters and it's incredibly hard to find anyone that wants to work. This is particularly true in the less sexy trades. Drywalling, flooring, systems furniture, things like that. We very regularly have multi-million dollar tenders close with only 1-2 bids, and several of the price fields will be left blank because the GC's couldn't get a sub to submit. Last year we paid $175/h for a drywaller because he knew no one else would do it. This has opened up a very interesting and stressful avenue of risk - contractors who make so much money that its no longer their main motivator. It's really changed the industry dynamic. Case and point I'm now the one sending them Christmas cards that more or less state "thank you for taking our money".
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Dec 21, 2019 16:39
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weato posted:We have two great electrical subs that constantly bail us out of bad situations. The one that specializes in high voltage live work is basically a gift from god.
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Dec 21, 2019 19:39
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LinkedIn and indeed were absolutely terrible in finding pmjobs in Q3 & Q4 for me. Is it true that most companies I need a PM can’t realize they need one?
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Dec 25, 2019 23:48
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I’ve been listening to Beyond Reason by Shapiro and Fisher and I’d highly recommend it for the thread. Many ways of solving problems by listening or negotiating it clearly explains and gives a framework to improve on no matter what your role or experience level is.
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Dec 26, 2019 10:15
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ilkhan posted:Where is all this going down? *It may be $175 for drywallers that can pass a drug test. God help those who drug test sheet rock hangers.
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Dec 27, 2019 05:43
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Dik Hz posted:I'm in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina and weato's experience is pretty similar to my company's. Not quite $175 for drywallers*, but it's getting there. You shouldn't be paying crap for hangers, now finishers though. Worth it completely if they are good.
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Dec 27, 2019 05:48
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Dik Hz posted:I'm in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina and weato's experience is pretty similar to my company's. Not quite $175 for drywallers*, but it's getting there. I'm in a rather bubbly area of southern Ontario, but colleagues elsewhere are having similar experiences. We don't typically have drug tests in Canadaland but we do require a criminal background check and vulnerable sector check... this does thin out the labour pool a fair bit.
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Dec 28, 2019 07:49
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So I've walked into the family business, HVAC contracting, with no experience in PM. We have no software besides quickbooks, meaning physical contract management, paper timecards, paper service tickets that aren't digitized, all that trash. I need to build a system that works for both the new construction side and the service side of the business. Thing is, I don't know where to start other than to ask those of you who are in construction or close enough for any suggestions. I can't really tell the difference between the wheat and the chaff other than Procore seems nice but costs 550 bucks a month which is a bit rich.
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Jan 3, 2020 17:48
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Speaking as an IT PM who's had painful implementations before: Can you assess the general IT and software system savvy of the organisation? Are they willing to change their business processes to match the software you'll deploy (answer on a scale of never to completely)? Is there a quieter time for the organsation where they won't mind if thinks take longer while they learn? Can you introduce some positive incentives for the staff to learn this stuff (e.g. free gift once they hit some sort of learning or proficency target)? Bonus points: Do your own suppliers or subcontractors have a system they would prefer you use or would like you to try out? I'm being very raw about those questions and providing absolutely no regard for the company-mandated "what does the business need, therefore that is the answer" line that I was trained to give, but at the same time, answering that stuff honestly is much more help than not
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Jan 3, 2020 18:45
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I'll answer in order: 1. There are three of us on the office side, we should be able to learn whatever system we choose in a reasonable amount of time. The field guys are definitely less IT savvy but the hope is that since they work in pairs they'll be able to help each other out and will only need to access a couple parts of the software anyway. 2. We're desperate to have better organization since we've lost money due to poor billing practices and missed contract renewals. 3. We have had quieter times, just getting out of one now, but waiting for another will probably make that period all the more painful if we leave money on the table again. 4. I feel like we're going to be a bit less carrot and a bit more stick with it, because this is all about discipline which has been lax. Could probably figure out some kind of gift to balance it though. 5. I'll ask some of our GC's what they use.
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Jan 3, 2020 19:15
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TheLawinator posted:So I've walked into the family business, HVAC contracting, with no experience in PM. We have no software besides quickbooks, meaning physical contract management, paper timecards, paper service tickets that aren't digitized, all that trash. I need to build a system that works for both the new construction side and the service side of the business. Thing is, I don't know where to start other than to ask those of you who are in construction or close enough for any suggestions. Do not build a system, buy just a few systems that integrate well with the others. For a small/mid sized business on the HR operations side I highly recommend Rippling. They're nice because not only do they automate everything from an HR side, they integrate with your various softwares. E.g. if you use Asana or Jira for PM they'll ask if you want to create new users during the onboarding workflow. You can add on TSheets for timekeeping as a plugin and its all integrated. They also allow you to assign IT hardware, remotely lock it, etc. in an easy to use way. I use this for my business. As a heads up, the construction industry is easily one of the most sued by its employees industries. Keep excellent time records. Keep backups of emails. Don't tolerate HR bullshit. For contracts, I'd pick one of the esigning vendors like GetAccept. They are generally pretty cheap. For the actual project tasks, not sure what that industry uses. I've not used them but for blueprints and construction project management I've heard good things about PlanGrid Procore and Rippling integrate but yea $550/mo, ouch. Asana and Jira are both commonly used for software and are much cheaper. I have a non developer/IT group that uses Jira with Gantt charts to do more traditional PM and I think that'd work fine but can't be sure. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 21:15
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Sweet, a PM thread. I was promoted to a “Sr Program Manager” (whatever the hell that is) almost a year ago. I still have no idea what I’m doing. Definitely feeling the imposter syndrome, mostly because my background is in people management and operations where there are clearly defined metrics to hit. Topping it off, my managers haven’t been PM’s, and even though I work at a bank you’ve heard of I don’t have project software. Other groups use JIRA, so I’ll have to see if I can get access and learn about it. If there’s a mentor pool out there of people connecting I’m all ears since I can’t put to much out there online.
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Jan 14, 2020 00:47
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savesthedayrocks posted:Sweet, a PM thread. Jira is really easy to use and has a free tier o think. I use it.
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Jan 14, 2020 04:06
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savesthedayrocks posted:Sweet, a PM thread. could be worse, I am currently being forced to use trello, even though 100% redundant (and out of sync) data from a system we already have. And we are being forced to use it for weekly task tracking. Mind you my dept closed some 400+ projects this past year... image a weekly pseudo sprint board with backlog, active, and blocked columns, but none of those individual cards have enough info or correlation with anything to be useful to any PM, stakeholder, person doing the work, etc. There are literally 80 cards on this dumb thing now and it's my slowest week of the year, and I need to care about all of them. We also don't track progress on any of those, and it's 100% waterfall, so as a PM I gain gently caress all from it.
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Jan 14, 2020 04:08
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MS Planner folks... It's the MS Paint of Project Planning. Occasionally great for purpose but want to do anything advance and you'd better be an utter master at it. Actually, considering some of the MS Paint art out there, I think this really is the analogy for MS Planner.
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Jan 14, 2020 04:20
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Heners_UK posted:MS Planner folks... It's the MS Paint of Project Planning. Occasionally great for purpose but want to do anything advance and you'd better be an utter master at it. Do you mean MS project? MS project is pretty aight for defense projects using waterfall in an environment the absolutely prohibits any integration Once you can have all you documentation have links to projects and what not with Jira though...no going back
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Jan 14, 2020 04:35
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