Reasoning about the sense of work of a project manager and how to formulate requirements for this vacancy
Finding employees is not easy, especially those that interact with the client on behalf of the company. It's about project managers. This is a huge responsibility both to the team and to the client. Even more enormous responsibility is on the manager who invites such a manager to work.
In search of such an employee, I went the standard way: for a start, I decided to describe the portrait of an ideal manager, as recommended by all the books and specialists. I remembered several types of managers with whom I had to interact. At the same time, a lot of questions arose to my colleagues, and I hurried to share these questions - and, if possible, discuss them.
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In my first presentation, the project manager is a customer representative on the performers side. In the end, it is not worth the creative people to be distracted by organizational issues, accounting, and especially pricing. All this is the task of the project manager.
I tried to highlight several "typical" managers of an advertising agency or IT company. It’s not so important - it’s CRM setup or website creation (in our case, this is website creation and advertising campaigns, but I’m also familiar with CRM implementations and software development). It turned out several group-types of managers:
Prepare documents and collect signatures of managers, distribute tasks to couriers and are somewhat similar to office managers rather than project managers. Monitor accounting and timely document flow. Something like that. By the way, no matter how much it gives to the bureaucracy, but all this is a very important part of the company's customer service. It happens very sad when, for example, the site is made, and everyone seems to be satisfied, but: there are no acts, invoices, closings provided to the client in time, and the contractor company is not regarded as a good website producer, but as a broken website that hinders the preparation financial statements.
Steep administrators can really discuss the terms of the contract (when they differ from the standard - and this happens very often with large clients), they can decide on the payment schedule and track it accordingly. Such people are indispensable for designers, technologists, programmers, simply because if the guys I have listed think about money and not about work, they will not see either money or work, respectively. Well, you need to do what you go to work for. Personally, all the preparatory dances with lawyers and accountants (and both of them) were pretty vybeshivali, and often I wanted to get to work and do everything, but I had to run around with pieces of paper. When I was fortunate enough to work with a great administrator, everyone was satisfied: the client who agreed to complete the site, and the whole working group that I paid more attention to as a project manager, and the accounting department, who realized that she would not see me and that it is possible to load someone with any accounting (censored) terminology.
Such, unfortunately, often occur - all tasks and customer requests are simply redirected to the performers, sometimes without even reading.
Even the most competent project managers usually switch to such postmen, especially when they are in a park. Unfortunately, they are not always aware of the fact that the parking generates even more parking.
The essence of the work of the postmen is to ensure that without reading or understanding, simply send the client's letter to one of the performers. The performer needs the most:
If the manager does not also check the work of the performer, and simply forwards the response of the performer to the client (the “corrected” option), then this is generally a disaster: the client is clearly upset that he was not understood, misunderstood, or did something that was not necessary , and even did nothing at all.
Come up with all sorts of things for customers and control their implementation at all stages of work. All formulation of tasks and their priority is coordinated by the producer. In my opinion, a producer is a consultant who has come out of “production”: he knows the technologies, their application, all the development stages - and, to the nuances, and is able to select the performers for the project (or is empowered to choose the right people for the client’s tasks) .
Such managers often achieve brilliant results in terms of functionality, beauty and efficiency, but they have one powerful drawback: they rarely keep track of actual expenses (that is, their administrative-bureaucratic skill is usually the worst developed). That is, these people are focused on the actual result, not financial. In the ideal case, they can come up with everything to meet half the cost estimate or stop on time (there are no limits to the perfection they are focused on) - then this is the most invaluable manager for both the company and the client. In such guys, specialists who created their own business and often (personally) depend on their clients, due to whom they live, outgrow.
By the way, any specialist of the company can become a producer - both a diner, a technologist, and a programmer.
There are also client managers - after all, most of our companies are not limited to creating websites (there are still corporate styles, applications for mobile devices, printing, all kinds of advertising, and so on). Most often it happens that:
A) requires a complex of services right now and
B) many different services can be provided not immediately, but for, say, two years.
The first option is often very attractive, but in fact not enough when demanded. The second is more common, but if the manager does not breathe with the client in unison, and does not know what he lives with, then often the entire amount of work is lost, and then two or three more services do not go. In order not to lose customers, it is logical to offer them pre-requisite services in demand, because these are often very predictable events. At the same time, it often happens that on the client side sometimes they do not even realize that the service is in demand for them (what you have written on the website is not always obvious to customers, and if you make personal offers, it becomes even sometimes obvious - true In retrospect; it is easier for a client manager to prepare a good personal offer - it is enough to meet or even just call).
Freelance professionals also act as project managers for their local tasks (local tasks for them are projects in themselves). It would seem that it is very cool: to be your own manager. But many freelancers also prefer to communicate with customers through managers - because they filter tasks and can help distinguish an unnecessary whim from a real bug or explain to a client in advance that this is such a useful feature.
At first, I considered freelancers simply for statistics, and then it occurred to me that the best freelancers, in their essence, are also client managers (see clause 4).
Personally, I think that the ideal manager is a blend of producer and client manager. It is difficult to find new clients and the work is preceded by a lot of preparation and lapping. And with old ones, working in this sense is simpler and more reliable, especially when you can come up with new things with your customers and develop and support their projects in every possible way. Money comes guaranteed (or with known and predictable delays), less lapping and nagging, deeper immersion in projects.
But all people are people, and from time to time they migrate from one type of manager to another, depending on the specifics of the organization’s work, clients and personal skills (which they can develop). Usually we proceed from the fact that a person is able and that he is best at work, and then we give him to work what he will do best and which will be of great benefit to the company. It works well in small or very large companies, where either no unification of actions is required due to the small number of staff, or everything has already been worked out and fixed in the form of standards and business processes to which the employee gets used from the first days of work (or even stage of the interview on yourself all this feels).
In medium-sized companies, a person of 70-100, the personal factor is still very strong and noticeable, but some standards of development and interaction between departments are very much needed. In the case of an advertising agency, in which the commercial department, media department, web studio, SEO and support are separate, this relationship is even more important: firstly, it is desirable to avoid duplication of managers (for example, there are web studio managers and commercial managers can partly duplicate each other because they communicate with clients), secondly, the line between the project manager (website, for example) and the client manager is gradually erased (and the “administrator” and the “commercial manager” are added to the same place). And just in medium-sized companies, the issue of defining the basic tasks of managers is very serious.
The question of the ideal manager did not arise for me accidentally: our company just needs such an employee. In order to compose the text of a vacancy, I had to sort through a bunch of situations and acquaintances, colleagues and clients in order to understand what was required of a person. So the conditional classification which I offered at the beginning of a post turned out. But I am sure that there are much more situations and people, and surely the community has interesting examples and practices - so I thought it would not be superfluous to share thoughts.
(If anyone is interested, as I formulated the vacancy, before the discussion on “Habré”, you can see its description on the studio’s website .)
Well, this project will certainly come in handy for project managers themselves - in order to determine their career development.
How do project managers, in their essence, differ from commercial managers - only because they are not looking for new clients of the company? Specialization? But after all, for the success of the sale you need at least a good command of the subject, otherwise there is a risk that the client will be more knowledgeable in the work, so the difference in specialization - ideally - becomes very ephemeral. I am sure that many of your practitioners will be interested.
How many projects can a manager manage at the same time? And if this is a client manager - how many clients can a single manager manage in parallel?
What to do in the case of technical support is more complex than publishing data (catalogs, pictures, etc.) when it needs to be improved? To create another manager in the technical support department, or to return the task to the developers from the support? The answer seems obvious, but support should always work, and managers may be overloaded with other projects, and the client will go crazy with waiting for a reaction or for having to work with another manager. So Captain Evidence seems to be resting.
In search of such an employee, I went the standard way: for a start, I decided to describe the portrait of an ideal manager, as recommended by all the books and specialists. I remembered several types of managers with whom I had to interact. At the same time, a lot of questions arose to my colleagues, and I hurried to share these questions - and, if possible, discuss them.
')
Project managers - who are they?
In my first presentation, the project manager is a customer representative on the performers side. In the end, it is not worth the creative people to be distracted by organizational issues, accounting, and especially pricing. All this is the task of the project manager.
I tried to highlight several "typical" managers of an advertising agency or IT company. It’s not so important - it’s CRM setup or website creation (in our case, this is website creation and advertising campaigns, but I’m also familiar with CRM implementations and software development). It turned out several group-types of managers:
1) Administrators
Prepare documents and collect signatures of managers, distribute tasks to couriers and are somewhat similar to office managers rather than project managers. Monitor accounting and timely document flow. Something like that. By the way, no matter how much it gives to the bureaucracy, but all this is a very important part of the company's customer service. It happens very sad when, for example, the site is made, and everyone seems to be satisfied, but: there are no acts, invoices, closings provided to the client in time, and the contractor company is not regarded as a good website producer, but as a broken website that hinders the preparation financial statements.
Steep administrators can really discuss the terms of the contract (when they differ from the standard - and this happens very often with large clients), they can decide on the payment schedule and track it accordingly. Such people are indispensable for designers, technologists, programmers, simply because if the guys I have listed think about money and not about work, they will not see either money or work, respectively. Well, you need to do what you go to work for. Personally, all the preparatory dances with lawyers and accountants (and both of them) were pretty vybeshivali, and often I wanted to get to work and do everything, but I had to run around with pieces of paper. When I was fortunate enough to work with a great administrator, everyone was satisfied: the client who agreed to complete the site, and the whole working group that I paid more attention to as a project manager, and the accounting department, who realized that she would not see me and that it is possible to load someone with any accounting (censored) terminology.
2) Postmen
Such, unfortunately, often occur - all tasks and customer requests are simply redirected to the performers, sometimes without even reading.
Even the most competent project managers usually switch to such postmen, especially when they are in a park. Unfortunately, they are not always aware of the fact that the parking generates even more parking.
The essence of the work of the postmen is to ensure that without reading or understanding, simply send the client's letter to one of the performers. The performer needs the most:
- understand the essence of the request
- check whether everything is as bad as the client writes
- try to reproduce everything
- then, to choose, answer the manager either “did not find an error”, or “corrected”, or “everything works for me” (and it doesn’t matter what it works).
If the manager does not also check the work of the performer, and simply forwards the response of the performer to the client (the “corrected” option), then this is generally a disaster: the client is clearly upset that he was not understood, misunderstood, or did something that was not necessary , and even did nothing at all.
3) Producers
Come up with all sorts of things for customers and control their implementation at all stages of work. All formulation of tasks and their priority is coordinated by the producer. In my opinion, a producer is a consultant who has come out of “production”: he knows the technologies, their application, all the development stages - and, to the nuances, and is able to select the performers for the project (or is empowered to choose the right people for the client’s tasks) .
Such managers often achieve brilliant results in terms of functionality, beauty and efficiency, but they have one powerful drawback: they rarely keep track of actual expenses (that is, their administrative-bureaucratic skill is usually the worst developed). That is, these people are focused on the actual result, not financial. In the ideal case, they can come up with everything to meet half the cost estimate or stop on time (there are no limits to the perfection they are focused on) - then this is the most invaluable manager for both the company and the client. In such guys, specialists who created their own business and often (personally) depend on their clients, due to whom they live, outgrow.
By the way, any specialist of the company can become a producer - both a diner, a technologist, and a programmer.
4) Client managers
There are also client managers - after all, most of our companies are not limited to creating websites (there are still corporate styles, applications for mobile devices, printing, all kinds of advertising, and so on). Most often it happens that:
A) requires a complex of services right now and
B) many different services can be provided not immediately, but for, say, two years.
The first option is often very attractive, but in fact not enough when demanded. The second is more common, but if the manager does not breathe with the client in unison, and does not know what he lives with, then often the entire amount of work is lost, and then two or three more services do not go. In order not to lose customers, it is logical to offer them pre-requisite services in demand, because these are often very predictable events. At the same time, it often happens that on the client side sometimes they do not even realize that the service is in demand for them (what you have written on the website is not always obvious to customers, and if you make personal offers, it becomes even sometimes obvious - true In retrospect; it is easier for a client manager to prepare a good personal offer - it is enough to meet or even just call).
5) Freelancers also have to act as their own managers.
Freelance professionals also act as project managers for their local tasks (local tasks for them are projects in themselves). It would seem that it is very cool: to be your own manager. But many freelancers also prefer to communicate with customers through managers - because they filter tasks and can help distinguish an unnecessary whim from a real bug or explain to a client in advance that this is such a useful feature.
At first, I considered freelancers simply for statistics, and then it occurred to me that the best freelancers, in their essence, are also client managers (see clause 4).
The ideal manager in my understanding
Personally, I think that the ideal manager is a blend of producer and client manager. It is difficult to find new clients and the work is preceded by a lot of preparation and lapping. And with old ones, working in this sense is simpler and more reliable, especially when you can come up with new things with your customers and develop and support their projects in every possible way. Money comes guaranteed (or with known and predictable delays), less lapping and nagging, deeper immersion in projects.
But all people are people, and from time to time they migrate from one type of manager to another, depending on the specifics of the organization’s work, clients and personal skills (which they can develop). Usually we proceed from the fact that a person is able and that he is best at work, and then we give him to work what he will do best and which will be of great benefit to the company. It works well in small or very large companies, where either no unification of actions is required due to the small number of staff, or everything has already been worked out and fixed in the form of standards and business processes to which the employee gets used from the first days of work (or even stage of the interview on yourself all this feels).
In medium-sized companies, a person of 70-100, the personal factor is still very strong and noticeable, but some standards of development and interaction between departments are very much needed. In the case of an advertising agency, in which the commercial department, media department, web studio, SEO and support are separate, this relationship is even more important: firstly, it is desirable to avoid duplication of managers (for example, there are web studio managers and commercial managers can partly duplicate each other because they communicate with clients), secondly, the line between the project manager (website, for example) and the client manager is gradually erased (and the “administrator” and the “commercial manager” are added to the same place). And just in medium-sized companies, the issue of defining the basic tasks of managers is very serious.
The question of the ideal manager did not arise for me accidentally: our company just needs such an employee. In order to compose the text of a vacancy, I had to sort through a bunch of situations and acquaintances, colleagues and clients in order to understand what was required of a person. So the conditional classification which I offered at the beginning of a post turned out. But I am sure that there are much more situations and people, and surely the community has interesting examples and practices - so I thought it would not be superfluous to share thoughts.
(If anyone is interested, as I formulated the vacancy, before the discussion on “Habré”, you can see its description on the studio’s website .)
Well, this project will certainly come in handy for project managers themselves - in order to determine their career development.
Questions that I would like to discuss with colleagues
How do project managers, in their essence, differ from commercial managers - only because they are not looking for new clients of the company? Specialization? But after all, for the success of the sale you need at least a good command of the subject, otherwise there is a risk that the client will be more knowledgeable in the work, so the difference in specialization - ideally - becomes very ephemeral. I am sure that many of your practitioners will be interested.
How many projects can a manager manage at the same time? And if this is a client manager - how many clients can a single manager manage in parallel?
What to do in the case of technical support is more complex than publishing data (catalogs, pictures, etc.) when it needs to be improved? To create another manager in the technical support department, or to return the task to the developers from the support? The answer seems obvious, but support should always work, and managers may be overloaded with other projects, and the client will go crazy with waiting for a reaction or for having to work with another manager. So Captain Evidence seems to be resting.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/118257/
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