3 important and 3 very important skills of the project manager

At the end of winter, I was called to give a review lecture to the students of Innopolis . The main goal set for me is to give students an understanding of which theoretical jungle to move in if you want to become a manager. In preparation for the meeting, I realized that there are major things without which there is no way, but there are good ones. Of course, you want to measure professionalism, and what else to take as a measure, if not the number of certificates handed in? But, as in any work, when dealing with people, very much rests on the ability to interact with them.

3 important skills that a manager may not possess ,
and the project will end successfully on time and within budget.

1. Methodologies
   
   
   
   Usually they describe the sequence of actions that will allow you to make the project as efficiently as possible: on time, with the functionality that the customer needs, and with a minimum of gestures. Usually there is an ideological layer inside, such as Agile manifesto or lean practice. Sometimes the methodology covers only part of the process, such as extreme programming, which talks exclusively about how to efficiently create code without affecting the rules of communication with the customer or planning. In any case, this is not a very long, clear algorithm for how to achieve the goal.
   ')
   I myself love and apply:
   
   
   • Kanban board in order to plan work with tasks on the service (Trello, by the way, is a charming tool for this);
   • SCRUM for development projects;
   • Prince 2 for structuring customer and project finance.
   
   I think all methodologies need not be known. The main thing is to choose what works well for you.
2. Frameworks
   
   
   
   It is quite another story about how to make the project as correct as possible, without forgetting anything. Usually this is a big Talmud, which includes a description of all the processes imaginable and unthinkable on the project. Compared to the previous paragraph, this is not a short algorithm, but a comprehensive description of all the processes, artifacts and approvals that need to be run in order to lead a project.
   
   Briefly tell what frameworks about what.
   
   CMMI and PMBok outline development project management processes. CMMI contains a description of the level of maturity of the organization: from immature, where processes are not set and the result cannot be reproduced, to very mature, where all the moves are recorded and all projects are created based on the described processes and learned lessons of the predecessors.
   
   ITSM and COBIT highlight the processes needed to build a service: the first from the point of view of those who set up processes, the second from the point of view of an auditor.
   
   TOGAF - about the processes needed to manage the company.
   
   It is usually written in such a language that it is quite difficult to read and implement it without the terrible torment of knowledgeable specialists and serious expenses throughout the company.
3. Techskills

Project evaluation, architecture, coding, testing. How this is done, a qualified manager must understand. But it’s best to encode, test and invent architecture on a project may not be able to, the main thing is to choose well-trained technical specialists: a project architect, a project tester, and an analyst who are good at it.

Actually, of course, a competent IT manager would be good at sorting out all three topics. But for those people who are just starting their way into management, I would advise not to start with them.

I participated in projects that ended successfully, despite the fact that they did not use any special methodologies, and nobody at that time heard about frameworks. She knew the team, where the cool manager was a graduate of a language university, without any technical background. On the other hand, I saw how the projects of specialists with excellent knowledge and experience collapsed, and which were supposed to be an example of the brilliant use of SCRUM and PMBoK. So, there are deeper skills, descriptions of which you will not find in methodologies and frameworks, not to mention technical literature.

We will talk about them further.

3 very important skills that a project manager should possess ,
otherwise, with the project, everything will be bad, despite the streamlined processes and high technology.

In fact, the manager of any project is a customizer of the same process:

1. Get a job, analyze, plan.
2. Gather and organize people.
3. Monitor the work on time and with the desired quality.
4. Hand over the job.

All that we talked about above is reflections on what methods and best practices the team will choose so that these 4 points are technically correct.

However, even doing the work absolutely correctly, you can easily ruin the project, because somewhere inside these 4 points there are people (customers, employees, members of neighboring departments) with all their nonlinearity.

When working with people, more subtle settings are needed, which, perhaps at first glance, are not so important. It:

1. setting trust;
2. setting goals;
3. ability to motivate.

Let's look at them in more detail.

1. Trusting relationship
   
   What are they based on? In fact, solely on your predictability and reliability. Let's say you promised on Monday to send a report. And not sent. Can one then trust your promises? Hardly.
   
   Or, say, as a manager, you promised to impose sanctions on anyone who was late for the rally. But when Vasya is late for a rally, you mumble him gently, without introducing any punishments. Will subordinates believe what you say? Again, hardly.
   
   Trusting for me is not that the manager should be good for everyone or trust everyone. They are about personal responsibility and about the fact that people need to demand the fulfillment of what is promised:
   
   • from employees - to make releases on time and send reports on time, since you pay them salaries and bonuses on time;
   • from customers - to respond to your letters and make decisions on time;
   • on my own - keep promises.
   
   In the project, such relationships also imply a clearly described work rules. I'm not talking about bureaucracy. For example, if the team of our company works with tickets, we should have instructions for working with them, open and understandable for employees and customers. Not because we cannot work without it, but because the agreements between all parties must be transparent.
   
   And on that day, when an upset client comes running to scold an employee for not closing the ticket in time, you open the instructions and say: “We are responsible for our words and the ticket has been closed for, say, 2 days. 2 days on our instructions with you - it's on time. I see that you are not happy. Let's discuss the instructions, if 2 days is a lot. ” At this moment, oddly enough, the client becomes happy: he sees that the situation can be managed, it is enough to create and fix agreements.
   
   Who do you need to build trust? I now cited the example of subordinates and clients. However, your boss and your colleagues must all know you as a person you can trust.
   
   
   
   What is it for?
   
   
   1. If there is confidence in your work on the part of the authorities , responsibility will be added sooner or later. I'm talking about career growth.
   2. If there is trust between you and the customer , the project will grow, which means that the team and your weight in the company will increase.
   3. If there is trust in the team, you just work with it , promise on its behalf and make the promise, which again leads to the joy of the customer and the management.
   4. If there is trust in you from neighboring managers , your initiatives in the company will work and your requests will be heard.
2. Setting goals
   
   The basic rules for setting tasks are:
   
   
   • by SMART. It does not need long discussions, I think the theory for many years.
   • according to the process or the result, depending on whether you are new or checked out. On the process for beginners to explain in stages how to do. According to the result, it is enough to outline what should be done by entrusting the technical details to a professional. In any case, it is not at all superfluous to mark the points of verification with the course - the dates when you will meet to understand that everything is going according to plan.
   • in the language of the interlocutor. Each person has a favorite set of words, which very clearly reflects his thought processes. Someone, talking about the project, speaks in colors about how they were going (the process) towards a common goal, someone notes what they managed to achieve (the result). Someone focuses on the class team, someone is more important than technology. Some repeat “look!” All the time, while others more often use “listen!”. It’s really easier for a person to understand you if you use his words.
   • recheck understanding. Unfortunately, what you said and what the person understood is two big differences. The rule for important or voluminous tasks is to ask a person to retell what he heard, or even better, send you a letter with a description of the task. Then, if he misunderstood something, you will have a chance to correct him immediately.
   • accept the result. It seems to be an obvious thing, but it happens that you are given a task, and then they forget to accept it. To do something so unimportant that your boss can easily forget about it, there is no place to demotivate. So it is important not to forget.
   
   Also, in order for a person to have a desire to perform a task, he needs to make it so interesting for him. Be sure to understand who, where in your team is growing, to know what tasks might be of interest to him. And, of course, you can submit the same idea very differently, which brings us to the next point, without which there is no motivation when working with a team.
3. Ability to motivate
   
   The theme of motivation is fashionable and popular, you can find enough courses on the net, at Stratoplan, at Gandapas. A lot of books are written about motivation. My favorites are listed below.
   
   In my opinion, motivation is a thing that is very similar to sales, no matter how strange it sounds. Most people strive for something. If a person does not strive for anything, it is necessary to poke him with a wand - suddenly he died. If he is not dead, not deeply depressed and mentally healthy, he wants something from life. Your task, like in sales, is to talk to a person and find out his needs and aspirations, understand how your “product” (project, task) can close these needs and end up “sell”. That is, to give him the work that he will do with joy and well. Or let go, realizing that you now do not have a “product” for this “client”.
   
   Like a good salesman, a good manager is more likely one who knows how to listen and hear, than one who can talk for a long time. For me, one of the main tools for working with motivation is quarterly conversations, about which I wrote an article earlier .
   

It can be seen that the skills described above flow from one to another. And this, of course, is not their full range. One must also be able to be a leader, to negotiate, to make decisions correctly, to resolve conflicts - all this comes as the manager grows older. I chose the three that, in my opinion, the most necessary.

The article is not at all about not needing to know methodologies or process frameworks. It is about knowing what is necessary, if you want to lead people at all, and what else you need to know if you want to be considered a professional IT manager.

Literature on motivation :

1. Glory to Pankratov. Black book manager.
2. How to feed cats. Manual for programmers who lead other programmers.
3. Lee Yakkoka. Career Manager.

Posted by: Fkleto4ku