I have had the fortune to have multiple "first projects".
At the start, as a project lead, I had a hands-off PM who expected me to conduct all PM activities for my track. I did this without any structure and learnt on the job. It was the biggest delta in terms of learning for me and am very grateful for that opportunity.
Then I served as an informal project coordinator on a very large project (in addition to my project responsibilities in leading a separate team). This gave me greater insight into the monitoring and controlling process group and grounded the importance of proper communication into me.
When I officially managed my first project - the biggest learning out of the experience was the critical importance of stakeholder management. After that, and since then, I have always held that stakeholder management is the most critical area in project management. Saving Changes...
Arash Bayazian SarkandiCEO| Eizat Alhayat project management ServicesDubai, United Arab Emirates
My first project was research on machine to machine for a transportation company which was terminated because the project was not feasible for the company and work was stopped after 6 month of cost planning. Saving Changes...
The first real project I had was the IT infrastructure portion of the relocation of my first company's office to a new location.
The number of moving parts intimidated me the most while planning and executing it, but the most valuable lesson I learned was the importance of risk management when we found out late on the Friday night of the move that none of our networking infrastructure was working and spent most of the weekend salvaging cabling from the old office and running it manually over and under ceiling tiles to ensure that staff were productive on Monday morning!
