The Best Advice I Never Got

Brad Egeland is an IT/project management consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management and project management experience leading initiatives in manufacturing, government contracting, gaming and hospitality, retail operations, aviation and airline, pharmaceutical, start-ups, healthcare, higher education, not-for-profit, high-tech, engineering and general IT.

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Managing scope is like babysitting a two-year-old … developers don’t wait for your green light … you won’t be finishing every project … and forget glory: most accolades will come from customers, not your executive team. This is some of the best advice I never got as a new project manager.

Ed. Note: Originally published on PM Tips.

As project managers, we’ve all been given advice along the way — some of it good advice, and some of it bad. We make mental notes of what worked and what didn’t and move on. Often we become mentors to new project managers who are seeking to gain a foothold as they start managing a portfolio of projects and customers and keep everyone happy in the process.

At some point I’ll write an article that looks at some of the mentoring I received or gave and ask for your participation. We’ll look at good advice and create a comprehensive list of ‘good advice’ for newer project managers. But for this article, what I’d really like to discuss is some of the things that I’ve picked up along the way just by learning the hard way. I’ll call it “The Best Advice I Never Got.”

Here’s my Top 5 in no particular order:

Even though you were once a developer, that doesn’t mean your developers won’t get things past you. I was a developer.  …

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