Project Management

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Where to begin?

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Rebecca Tibbits
We are currently a company under 150 employees. I grew up with the company and have just been promoted to Project Manager (no formal experience) moving from the accounting department. The company has never had a project manager and doesn't have any existing templates or tools. 

I have started using Smartsheet for various things I needed tracking and workflows for and have been getting more familiar. I am also taking the CAPM training but projects are coming now. I know our organization won't be doing insane large-scale projects but I would love to setup or find some templates to make life easier and consistent. 

My first 3 projects are slated to start next week all unrelated, one of the projects is 3 phases. Is Smartsheet a good way to start? Any tips or templates you can recommend. Upcoming projects fee increases in 3 different phases to different groups, platform conversion (mortgages), new initiative.

One thing I can't get out of my own head on is timelines and how am I to determine how long each task should take? Once actually doing PM this will probably be so miniscule but it's creating a mental roadblock for me right now. 

Also, I'm taking a long road trip any helpful trainings or audio I can download for the ride? 

Thank you all in advance! 
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Md. Golam Rob Talukdar
Community Champion
Project Manager| AWR Development (BD) Ltd. Cox's Bazer , Bangladesh
Hello Rebecca Tibbits

PMI Infinity™ 2.0 can be a valuable asset in your new role as a Project Manager.
Its document generation, templates, and document upload features will help you streamline your workflow, ensure consistency, and provide accurate project timelines.

I hope that you can effectively manage your upcoming projects.

We wish you the best of luck in your new role as a project manager!

Golam
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1 reply by Rebecca Tibbits
Oct 25, 2024 8:31 AM
Rebecca Tibbits
...
Thank you so much! I think PMI infinity might be exactly what I was looking for! That initial outline to get me started and out of paralysis! I appreciate it!
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Rebecca Tibbits
Oct 25, 2024 8:16 AM
Replying to Md. Golam Rob Talukdar
...
Hello Rebecca Tibbits

PMI Infinity™ 2.0 can be a valuable asset in your new role as a Project Manager.
Its document generation, templates, and document upload features will help you streamline your workflow, ensure consistency, and provide accurate project timelines.

I hope that you can effectively manage your upcoming projects.

We wish you the best of luck in your new role as a project manager!

Golam
Thank you so much! I think PMI infinity might be exactly what I was looking for! That initial outline to get me started and out of paralysis! I appreciate it!
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Pavan Maddi
Community Champion
Buona Vista, Singapore

Thank you for sharing your journey and challenges as a new Project Manager!



Stepping into this role and seeking guidance is a brave step, and it’s something many of us in project management can relate to. It’s great to see you taking proactive measures like using Smartsheet and working toward CAPM certification.

When it comes to managing timelines and estimating task durations, you're not alone—many of us find this challenging at first, but it does get easier with practice.
Here are a few tips that might help:

- Break tasks into smaller, manageable parts to make estimation easier.
- Refer to historical data or benchmarks for a realistic idea of task durations.
- Seek input from team members or subject matter experts for better estimates.
- Include buffer time for contingencies to account for unexpected changes.

Keep going—you’re already on the right track!
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Pavan Maddi
Community Champion
Buona Vista, Singapore
Congratulations 
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Verónica Elizabeth Pozo Ruiz RYLAI Access Control Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador
To determine how long each task should take, it's adequate to divide the task into small components, more manegeable, and estimate time for each component.
You must take additional considerations, like task dependencies, risks, resource availability.
Check this article, that will provide good insights: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/caree...-time-for-tasks
and also this one, that explains task estimation techniques: https://www.simplilearn.com/project-estimation-techniques-article
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Here comes:
1-each human being in this planet performs project manager activities from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. The difference with doing that at work is the level of formality mainly in some metrics that leadership team is waiting for.
2-what you find inside the PMI documents are best practices, no more than that. You have to put those in something like a process.
3-project manager is a key role to create solutions, where solutions is equal to "the thing" to be created (here the business analyst is accountable for it) plus "the way" to create it (here the project manager is accountable for it).
4-think in a pyramid. To create a solution (the way) you have to decide an approach (the base of the pyramid, agile/traditional/etc), a life cycle (waterfall, iterative-incremental, etc), a method (just in case you decide approach agile with iterative -incremental you could decide for Scrum for example), a tool (in this case it could be Smartsheet if and only if it is able to support the method).
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