Tell us what ails you and we’ll make it better.
Think of this as a Dear Abby made just for digital project managers. There have been countless times I wished I had someone to sound off on, even if it was just to hear “you’re not crazy”. Let me be the cushion to your question, the soothsayer to appropriate action. The Dear Sugar to our profession. I’m your cheerleader, your sister, your confidante – but never your mother.
So… how’s work? Tell me everything! Seriously. I know something’s nagging at you.
Tell us and we’ll make it better. I mean we’re all in this together, right?
I am the second project manager in a growing firm. My predecessor (and still present PM) has 12 years of experience and I was very excited to learn from him. He was the only PM in the company prior to my arrival. Quickly into the job, he came across to me as a “minimum requirements” kinda guy. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, as he was just given too many projects to manage with too little support.
We are a digital marketing agency and we have a small team of 4 people handling around 20 clients. We’ve tried Scrum and, like you said, the time spent in the rituals as ridiculous and they quickly got sidelined. We are so disorganized that we literally start each day not sure what to work on or what’s the most important for a client or deadline or objective.
I work for an agency that produces client marketing sites. There is heavy involvement from DPMs during the design, architecture and content phases – but as projects move into the development phase their involvement starts to decrease. When the site is done being developed, it goes through an internal review and QA process where the DPMs are hands-off and expect other team members to manage the backlog and prioritization.
Big picture I think they are loosing insight into trends: what mistakes are we making every project, how many client issues are getting logged, etc. Am I wrong? I’m looking to get an understanding of the expectations of the DPM. Can you all help?
It’s holiday season which means chasing deadlines, demanding client needs, and of course – the Company Holiday Party! This is the time of year that is trying both personally and professionally. Everything in the media is telling us we’re not doing enough – and to boot, we’re trying to stay balanced and do our best to meet our client needs with also minding our internal teams capacity. What I want to ask, is how can PM’s can find balance in this busy time?
Ugh, so I can’t stop thinking about this side job that I was up for and didn’t get. I can’t stop thinking about why I wasn’t picked!! I am pretty sure I know who wound up getting it and now I can’t stop thinking about how I measure up to that guy and what I should be doing differently. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to let it go. HELP.
