Happy with first PM job, but worried about not learning enough

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Franco Sartori Project Manager| I.DE.A.A.S. Argentina

Hi everyone,

I've been working as a PM in the software industry for little over a month and I'm really happy. Job search was tough and I'm truly passionate about this stuff. However, I don't have a mentor and I feel I could be doing and learning so much more...

I may sound over-ambitious or plain dumb but I want to become a great PM, I don't want to settle for mediocrity. So I'd appreciate it if anyone could point me in some direction. Is it possible to find a mentor online or something? I honestly don't know what I'm looking for.. I just want to make the most of this stage of my career.

Thank you so much.

Posted: Oct 15, 2019 6:16 PM

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Deepesh Rammoorthy ICT Project Manager ( PMP®AgilePM®Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®))| Australian Red Cross Blood Service Tarneit, Vic, Australia

Hi Franco ,

These are some questions that I am not necessarily asking you to answer but some that may make you think whether you can "Further" develop your skills in a specific aspect of project management e.g Planning , Procurement or Stakeholder Management .

You say that you work in the software industry . What is it exactly that your company does ? Does it make in-house software and you project manage a team of internal software developers?

Or are you a project manager who leads projects that implement software for an external clients?

Project Management roles in both these cases have different kinds of challenges and experiences.

It seems like its a small company and project management practices may not be mature enough. Here's your chance Franco, Why don't you develop some templates and baselines and process maps on how Project Management should be run in this company?

Have you understood what the software exactly does? Have you understood the high level architecture of your software? Do you know the programming language used? The IDE used to develop your software? The Application servers in use?

Does your team follow a structured Software Development Life Cycle? Do they perform peer reviews? Do they do pair programming? Do they have robust version control ? Backups and Recovery Regimes?

Do you know about your developers' strengths and weaknesses? Do you know about your project team's weaknesses and strengths? Do you know about Maslow's hierarchy of Needs? About different Motivational theories on how to get the team to work together?

Does your project have a solid business case?
Have you identified all the gaps in your scope?
Have you identified all your stakeholders or at-least the key ones?
Have you started managing project budget?
Do you know how to forecast your budget for the next month?
Do you understand how your project is funded?
Do you think you would need to procure external software? or External resources or external consultancy for your project? what's your plan for that?
Have you thought about how your company goes about procuring such external consultants?
What do you do in your day-to-day role ?
For your current project , do you have a Risk/Issues register?
Do you have a Project Management Plan , Do you have a project schedule ? Have you got a Work Breakdown Structure ?
Do you conduct Agile Ceremonies? Do you do showcases? do you do Retrospectives ? do you do Daily Stand-ups? Do you do Iteration Planning?
Do you use JIRA ? or MS Project or have you tried using other Planning and Project Management software?
Are your team members local and remote? what issues have you found collaborating with remote team members? do you use team-sites? Share-point sites
Do you report to a project steering committee or prepare weekly and monthly reports? Are you streamlining or continuously refining those reports?

The truth of the matter is , you are trying to move at a million miles per hour when you need time to develop your skills and experience.

Keep looking for a mentor , however there are plenty of things in your realm like doing additional courses, attending seminars , webinars, seeing youtube vidoes , reading books, networking.

The key is continuous improvement, lean thinking , minimizing waste, becoming more efficient .

Look at the current processes and your own knowledge and try improving them one day at a time.

Slow and Steady still wins the race my friend !

Posted: Oct 22, 2019 11:13 PM (Updated by author: Oct 22, 2019 11:15 PM)

Suzi MS United Kingdom

Congratulations on your new adventure, already many practical advices from the seniors here! Take your time, don’t overthink - pace it to journey your own story! Make full use of the fantastic community support here - you will soon understand before you know it, all the best Franco!

Posted: Oct 24, 2019 3:07 PM (Updated by author: Oct 24, 2019 3:07 PM)

Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada

Oct 15, 2019 6:50 PM

Replying to Franco Sartori

...

Thank you for your comment Kiron.

I check this discussion group sometimes and while I have found useful content, most of it applies to situations or circumstances I'm far from experiencing just yet.

Regarding local groups: I've had a couple interactions with my province's PMI Chapter... they haven't been the most helpful. I've tried contacting PMs on LinkedIn, same story. They all just seem to give the same generic answers. I don't think it's their intention, I believe they're either not that interested in the topic or think that you just learn with experience... which you do, but there's got to be skill variety, right? Am I crazy to think that 10 different PMs with 5 years experience each will be different from each other? Manage projects differently, be good at different things?

Franco -

This is the challenge with our profession in that context counts so the safest answer you are likely to get in many cases is "It depends"!

This is why it is important to find a mentor ideally within your company or at least in your industry and geographic location to reduce the points of divergence from your context.

Good luck!

Kiron

Posted: Oct 24, 2019 6:38 PM

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Happy with first PM job, but worried about not learning enough

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