Guide for a novice project manager: drive a bike that burns
We have collected this guide for those who want to steer, suffer, and of projects to manage. Tips, lifehacks, resources for getting useful knowledge and even a link to a great opportunity to start a career;)
We will tell you how to break into project management or develop in this direction. We will understand what skills are important for projects, how to develop them and how to find a job as a project manager if you do not have a technical education.
Well, first of all, you can work in a team of interesting people, if you are lucky, but in general there is teamwork right in its best manifestations, nothing happens without it. You will have the opportunity to feel part of a real project, to participate in its creation and development. This is one of those positions where you can watch from the start of a process to its end. And this is a special thrill when you see the result. Well, you suffer from the heart.
')
And another big plus for the representatives of the Z and Y generations - such kind of positions as a project manager always have to informal communication. Just because you know all your colleagues very well and will be with them 24/7.
It is also important that in the process of work you interact not only with people from your team. You also communicate with other interested parties: discuss edits with the project manager, conduct scram-planning sessions and explain to the customer that nine women cannot bear one child per month (after all, big projects are not done this way!). This makes the work of the project manager interesting, but sometimes difficult.
Everyone comes to the project manager with some very important question, so you have to be involved in all the details of the process. So coming to work first, and leaving last - this is not news. Well, you need to be always in touch, listen and say: “uzbagoyya!”. In short, this is not just a job, but an approach to life, forcing one to be able to resolve various caseids. And this is a great experience.
Being a project manager is definitely not boring. Always some new shoal, problem, well, or a bug. Learn to cope with the most difficult tasks.
These are all emotional aspects of work. It is important, of course, to love what you are doing, but there are formal tasks and duties that will need to be performed.
* if you really want to know what he is doing, go for an internship project in a cool bank right away
1. Collects project requirements, analyzes business cases to understand the needs of the customer / buyer of the product. PM understands what clients need, knows how to set goals for the team. A good project manager always works with colleagues. This is the essence.
2. Looking for solutions. Or rather, it produces them. A project manager is a strategist who can lead a team to the right decision. For this, he facilitates the brainstorms, makes the team think “out of the box”. Well, or just gets a belt. Joke.
3. PM controls that any communications are planned and effective. Which, of course, is not always possible. He will definitely not track your calls to your grandmother, or where else you are calling. In large projects, he can also take over the monitoring of communication with the media.
4. Another project manager handles tasks: he mercilessly cuts them into small ones and delegates, delegates, delegates. And yet is the lord of deadlines.
5. Building a sequence of events. This is generally the cornerstone of project planning and management. It is necessary to understand exactly what and what action follows? So the project plan is a kind of map, which is better to follow, so as not to pack everything up.
6. Bring the project to the end at the cost of his life (* experiment). This is his main task - to finish! Being a “manager of an unrealized project” is somehow not cool, agree! Therefore, jokes about PM, which themselves all finished last night - not always jokes.
7. Controls including paper work. And here without the bureaucracy anywhere: the contract, the technical task, the project plan, the project charter and a lot of other papers. Be prepared to constantly change the cartridge in the printer.
8. Well, and talks about the process of working on the project to all interested. Basically, of course reports to the customer.
As you already understood, to become a real project manager, a theory about project management is not enough. There are still soft and hard skills, without which nowhere.
Communication, communication, interaction
The project manager has to communicate with different people and find a common language with everyone: with the head of the department, and with the younger developer, and with the marketer. The main thing is to be able to communicate information so that everyone can understand. It is clear enough to fulfill your request or set the task.
Foreign colleagues and cultural differences
No difference in time, as well as features of the mentality should not interfere with the project manager to build bridges. And the book "Methods of persuasion of the Italian by means of gastronomic cases" is generally your manual.
Knowledge of language
Yes, international projects are always cool. New market, uncharted audience and a lot of opportunities for the company and the manager. And so, the head instructs you to hold one of these meetings in English, and you are such a "I do not understand yours."
Paper work
The work of a project manager is not only brainstorms, creative ideas and digital parties. Remember that you have to keep large volumes of documents: build summary tables in Excel, make agreements and reconcile accounts.
PM as a mosaic of a million puzzles
The project manager must be attentive to detail, and also have analytical, critical and abstract thinking at the same time.
O - responsibility, P - determination
It is important to be prepared to take responsibility for your decisions that you will make every day. And it is also important to find them quickly - so determination also comes in handy.
3D thinking outside the framework + top view
To make sure that your decisions are true, you should be immersed in the subject and think more broadly - be able to look at the situation from above.
Patience
Your team will constantly ask a thousand questions, and you, as the gray-haired sage, will have to assess the situation as a whole and divide everything according to clear objectives. PM for the team - alpha and omega, yin and yang.
Project Manager - Team Player
He is not only a leader, but also a team player. You can not be isolated from the team and simply distribute tasks. You are the captain of the ship: come on board first and leave the last.
If we consider the professional skills of a project manager, he is rather a universal, and, as mentioned above, he is not an expert in any one area.
PM knows different aspects and peculiarities of his field, understands how business processes are organized and even understands the legal part. But he doesn’t dive deep into details: there’s enough understanding of how processes, departments and employees are connected - a project manager doesn’t have to be a contractor himself.
Profit: to be a professional, a project manager does not have to be able to code
And in order for a developer to become a good project manager, it is necessary to understand psychology, the basics of communication, constantly communicate with people and be a decisive leader.
Therefore, dear PM, develop your knowledge and skills in breadth, not deep.
Learn the different features and techniques of project management and never dwell on one thing. In spite of the fact that now Agile is all over the head, it is useful to be interested in other techniques like Waterfall and extreme project management.
Subscribe to channels or pages that publish articles and life hacks on communication with people, competent management, features of risk management or simple work with documents - simplify your professional life and save your nerves.
For those who do not know how to start the path of a project manager, we suggest: with an internship in a large company, where mentors and colleagues will help you grow quickly.
By the way, now in one cool bank there is a set for a summer IT internship - you still have time to file an application before April 24 and get the opportunity to develop in Fintech. You will work on real projects with a personal mentor and an individual development plan - in 3 months you will become a confident young specialist. Rather, send a request .
Of course, education in the field of IT and business informatics will be a good advantage for the future project manager. In Russia, the advertising and marketing specialties are also considered relevant. But the lack of specialized education does not mean that the road to IT is closed to you.
In fact, projects with an IT background often go too far into technical details and start digging through the code instead of managing the command. As we said before, a good PM should understand many related areas, so don't limit yourself to anything. And for greater certainty, go through several technical courses or dare to a second higher education.
If you have not yet received a bachelor's degree, pay attention to the areas of management and business management - try to find suitable lectures / courses at your university, study the materiel yourself or try to start with an internship.
Of course, work in IT projects requires technical knowledge, which is why employers require an appropriate background. If this is not the case - urgently get relevant experience, it sometimes means much more than a diploma. Try to start with a startup or a small project: yes, you will have to work for a small reward, but you will get an irreplaceable experience with which you can already knock on more serious companies.
Experienced projects are advised to start working in the field, and then get an education. Why?
1. Understand whether you really need it. Make sure you don’t embellish reality: managing projects is cool, but it’s not just a joke about “riding a bike that burns” was born. Constant stress, a rare sense of its significance and pressure from all sides - not everyone is ready for this. From the pleasant there will be relief after the resolution of the unsolvable problem, pride in the found elegant solution and taxiing out of the impasse. Yes, it is pleasant.
2. Many PMI certificates require up to 3 years of work experience. First you need to get into the field, get a real work experience, and then a formal education. This means that many things will have to learn from your mistakes, and then relearn, but without experience you will not be able to understand the important details of the work.
This will occur by itself in the process of work, but we insist on the need for self-education. Read articles and books - professional and artistic. Ask questions. Ask for advice. Google Look for answers, even if they are not on the first page of Google. Who seeks will always find.
The need for new information is what distinguishes a good project from a bad one. Be a good manager, focus on the following knowledge:
Formal, project management. Nothing could be simpler: a management textbook, several leadership books and an armful of TED Talks. You need to know everything and even more about how to manage, motivate and make happy the most important people - your team.
Narrow, specialized. You must know everything about the field in which your project works. Create medical gadgets - go ahead and study biology and chemistry, make software to protect data - become an ace of cybersecurity. Without such knowledge, you risk missing a few small but very important details.
Personal, soft. We have already spoken about this: it is necessary to develop as a person, otherwise you are finished. Courses, books, communication with smart people - do not miss any chance.
As soon as you feel that self-education is no longer rushing, go to the courses. This often happens in the second year of work, when the brain begins to require constant training. If you are independent enough, study online.
Here is a small list of online schools where you can get a degree without leaving the screen:
→ Open College Courses
→ Distant Learning Courses
→ Free Online Courses from EdX
Project management is a difficult profession, but you will never be bored. Multitasking, a mixture of technology and creativity and adrenaline - that's what awaits you along the way. In the process, you will receive knowledge that will allow you to become literally anyone, develop a lot of useful skills and get used to never stop at what has been accomplished.
Do not change your mind to become a project manager? Try yourself in an internship in a cool bank ! Go :)
We will tell you how to break into project management or develop in this direction. We will understand what skills are important for projects, how to develop them and how to find a job as a project manager if you do not have a technical education.
Who is the project manager and why is he cool?
Well, first of all, you can work in a team of interesting people, if you are lucky, but in general there is teamwork right in its best manifestations, nothing happens without it. You will have the opportunity to feel part of a real project, to participate in its creation and development. This is one of those positions where you can watch from the start of a process to its end. And this is a special thrill when you see the result. Well, you suffer from the heart.
')
And another big plus for the representatives of the Z and Y generations - such kind of positions as a project manager always have to informal communication. Just because you know all your colleagues very well and will be with them 24/7.
It is also important that in the process of work you interact not only with people from your team. You also communicate with other interested parties: discuss edits with the project manager, conduct scram-planning sessions and explain to the customer that nine women cannot bear one child per month (after all, big projects are not done this way!). This makes the work of the project manager interesting, but sometimes difficult.
Everyone comes to the project manager with some very important question, so you have to be involved in all the details of the process. So coming to work first, and leaving last - this is not news. Well, you need to be always in touch, listen and say: “uzbagoyya!”. In short, this is not just a job, but an approach to life, forcing one to be able to resolve various caseids. And this is a great experience.
Being a project manager is definitely not boring. Always some new shoal, problem, well, or a bug. Learn to cope with the most difficult tasks.
Okay, so what to do
These are all emotional aspects of work. It is important, of course, to love what you are doing, but there are formal tasks and duties that will need to be performed.
So what does the project do?
* if you really want to know what he is doing, go for an internship project in a cool bank right away
1. Collects project requirements, analyzes business cases to understand the needs of the customer / buyer of the product. PM understands what clients need, knows how to set goals for the team. A good project manager always works with colleagues. This is the essence.
2. Looking for solutions. Or rather, it produces them. A project manager is a strategist who can lead a team to the right decision. For this, he facilitates the brainstorms, makes the team think “out of the box”. Well, or just gets a belt. Joke.
3. PM controls that any communications are planned and effective. Which, of course, is not always possible. He will definitely not track your calls to your grandmother, or where else you are calling. In large projects, he can also take over the monitoring of communication with the media.
4. Another project manager handles tasks: he mercilessly cuts them into small ones and delegates, delegates, delegates. And yet is the lord of deadlines.
5. Building a sequence of events. This is generally the cornerstone of project planning and management. It is necessary to understand exactly what and what action follows? So the project plan is a kind of map, which is better to follow, so as not to pack everything up.
6. Bring the project to the end at the cost of his life (* experiment). This is his main task - to finish! Being a “manager of an unrealized project” is somehow not cool, agree! Therefore, jokes about PM, which themselves all finished last night - not always jokes.
7. Controls including paper work. And here without the bureaucracy anywhere: the contract, the technical task, the project plan, the project charter and a lot of other papers. Be prepared to constantly change the cartridge in the printer.
8. Well, and talks about the process of working on the project to all interested. Basically, of course reports to the customer.
Skills to pump to the future project manager
As you already understood, to become a real project manager, a theory about project management is not enough. There are still soft and hard skills, without which nowhere.
Soft skills
Communication, communication, interaction
The project manager has to communicate with different people and find a common language with everyone: with the head of the department, and with the younger developer, and with the marketer. The main thing is to be able to communicate information so that everyone can understand. It is clear enough to fulfill your request or set the task.
Foreign colleagues and cultural differences
No difference in time, as well as features of the mentality should not interfere with the project manager to build bridges. And the book "Methods of persuasion of the Italian by means of gastronomic cases" is generally your manual.
Knowledge of language
Yes, international projects are always cool. New market, uncharted audience and a lot of opportunities for the company and the manager. And so, the head instructs you to hold one of these meetings in English, and you are such a "I do not understand yours."
Paper work
The work of a project manager is not only brainstorms, creative ideas and digital parties. Remember that you have to keep large volumes of documents: build summary tables in Excel, make agreements and reconcile accounts.
PM as a mosaic of a million puzzles
The project manager must be attentive to detail, and also have analytical, critical and abstract thinking at the same time.
O - responsibility, P - determination
It is important to be prepared to take responsibility for your decisions that you will make every day. And it is also important to find them quickly - so determination also comes in handy.
3D thinking outside the framework + top view
To make sure that your decisions are true, you should be immersed in the subject and think more broadly - be able to look at the situation from above.
Patience
Your team will constantly ask a thousand questions, and you, as the gray-haired sage, will have to assess the situation as a whole and divide everything according to clear objectives. PM for the team - alpha and omega, yin and yang.
Project Manager - Team Player
He is not only a leader, but also a team player. You can not be isolated from the team and simply distribute tasks. You are the captain of the ship: come on board first and leave the last.
Hard skills
If we consider the professional skills of a project manager, he is rather a universal, and, as mentioned above, he is not an expert in any one area.
PM knows different aspects and peculiarities of his field, understands how business processes are organized and even understands the legal part. But he doesn’t dive deep into details: there’s enough understanding of how processes, departments and employees are connected - a project manager doesn’t have to be a contractor himself.
Profit: to be a professional, a project manager does not have to be able to code
And in order for a developer to become a good project manager, it is necessary to understand psychology, the basics of communication, constantly communicate with people and be a decisive leader.
Therefore, dear PM, develop your knowledge and skills in breadth, not deep.
Do not forget about the constant self-development
Learn the different features and techniques of project management and never dwell on one thing. In spite of the fact that now Agile is all over the head, it is useful to be interested in other techniques like Waterfall and extreme project management.
Subscribe to channels or pages that publish articles and life hacks on communication with people, competent management, features of risk management or simple work with documents - simplify your professional life and save your nerves.
Do not waste your time and start your career today.
For those who do not know how to start the path of a project manager, we suggest: with an internship in a large company, where mentors and colleagues will help you grow quickly.
By the way, now in one cool bank there is a set for a summer IT internship - you still have time to file an application before April 24 and get the opportunity to develop in Fintech. You will work on real projects with a personal mentor and an individual development plan - in 3 months you will become a confident young specialist. Rather, send a request .
Do I get a diploma?
Of course, education in the field of IT and business informatics will be a good advantage for the future project manager. In Russia, the advertising and marketing specialties are also considered relevant. But the lack of specialized education does not mean that the road to IT is closed to you.
In fact, projects with an IT background often go too far into technical details and start digging through the code instead of managing the command. As we said before, a good PM should understand many related areas, so don't limit yourself to anything. And for greater certainty, go through several technical courses or dare to a second higher education.
And if I shkololo
If you have not yet received a bachelor's degree, pay attention to the areas of management and business management - try to find suitable lectures / courses at your university, study the materiel yourself or try to start with an internship.
Of course, work in IT projects requires technical knowledge, which is why employers require an appropriate background. If this is not the case - urgently get relevant experience, it sometimes means much more than a diploma. Try to start with a startup or a small project: yes, you will have to work for a small reward, but you will get an irreplaceable experience with which you can already knock on more serious companies.
Experience is most important?
Experienced projects are advised to start working in the field, and then get an education. Why?
1. Understand whether you really need it. Make sure you don’t embellish reality: managing projects is cool, but it’s not just a joke about “riding a bike that burns” was born. Constant stress, a rare sense of its significance and pressure from all sides - not everyone is ready for this. From the pleasant there will be relief after the resolution of the unsolvable problem, pride in the found elegant solution and taxiing out of the impasse. Yes, it is pleasant.
2. Many PMI certificates require up to 3 years of work experience. First you need to get into the field, get a real work experience, and then a formal education. This means that many things will have to learn from your mistakes, and then relearn, but without experience you will not be able to understand the important details of the work.
How to cultivate the skills of the project?
This will occur by itself in the process of work, but we insist on the need for self-education. Read articles and books - professional and artistic. Ask questions. Ask for advice. Google Look for answers, even if they are not on the first page of Google. Who seeks will always find.
The need for new information is what distinguishes a good project from a bad one. Be a good manager, focus on the following knowledge:
Formal, project management. Nothing could be simpler: a management textbook, several leadership books and an armful of TED Talks. You need to know everything and even more about how to manage, motivate and make happy the most important people - your team.
Narrow, specialized. You must know everything about the field in which your project works. Create medical gadgets - go ahead and study biology and chemistry, make software to protect data - become an ace of cybersecurity. Without such knowledge, you risk missing a few small but very important details.
Personal, soft. We have already spoken about this: it is necessary to develop as a person, otherwise you are finished. Courses, books, communication with smart people - do not miss any chance.
As soon as you feel that self-education is no longer rushing, go to the courses. This often happens in the second year of work, when the brain begins to require constant training. If you are independent enough, study online.
Here is a small list of online schools where you can get a degree without leaving the screen:
→ Open College Courses
→ Distant Learning Courses
→ Free Online Courses from EdX
Conclusion
Project management is a difficult profession, but you will never be bored. Multitasking, a mixture of technology and creativity and adrenaline - that's what awaits you along the way. In the process, you will receive knowledge that will allow you to become literally anyone, develop a lot of useful skills and get used to never stop at what has been accomplished.
Do not change your mind to become a project manager? Try yourself in an internship in a cool bank ! Go :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/326994/
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