A project manager may have a dozen daily meetings – for 10 minutes and 2 hours, on business issues or small talk- over coffee or networking at a conference. In such a kaleidoscope of events, it’s essential to focus on the goals achieved at each meeting and try to make each of them effective.
In addition, the schedule should leave time for yourself. How to plan the day so that neither you nor your team’s head is spinning, remember the details, and what to do when everything goes wrong. Oleksandr Korytskyi, Senior Delivery Manager at Levi9, tells us this.
A project manager’s (PM) working day is monotonous: meetings from morning to evening and communication with the team and customers through various channels. Their topics and schedule density depend on how actively the PM participates in projects, their methodology (AGILE/SCRUM/Waterfall or a combination), and how closely the PM works with the client. When involved in the technical team’s work, the manager participates in daily stand-ups and kickoff meetings on technical or other issues. When working more closely with the client, a PM should monitor processes on their side and respond to changes, sometimes even outside of working hours.
Rapidly changing contexts: How not to miss the main point
A project manager should take a holistic approach – see the big picture and the interconnections between all processes to be consistent in their actions and lead the team in the right direction. A manager doesn’t live one day at a time but plans for periods – a week, a month, a quarter, or six months. For example, my calendar always shows the working week, and when I hold a meeting on Monday, I adjust the schedule for the next period depending on the results of the conversation. The habit of planning is also reflected in my personal life; even a trip to another city or a café with friends is planned one month in advance.
Goals and objectives should be a red thread in all the processes during the day, and you must keep them in mind. Planning “for now” doesn’t work; you have to prepare for the meeting, and, for example, if you need to solve a problem in a conversation, you have to come up with a proposal. When you find out about a meeting 5 minutes before it starts, it’s hard to shift the focus from one topic to another quickly. Knowing the plan for the week, you are already subconsciously focused on the issues on the agenda.
Being constantly everywhere: the main focuses of the PM
The project manager must monitor all processes on the project, but there are three main vectors:
- People: How they feel and how their work is progressing on the project.
- Time: Whether you are on time, late, or ahead of schedule.
- Costs: Whether the project's financial resources are limited and how you can meet them while doing the job well. It's like with apartment renovations: you set a limit of 20 thousand and fix the price. And if the workers spend more time or materials, it won't affect you, and the builders will try to consider this in future projects. It's the same in IT: problems in the team's work influence the project implementation time and, thus, influence hidden costs.
Not everything goes smoothly in the workflow, and the project manager must be stress-resistant and ready to stick to the plan even if things go wrong. Let’s say you scheduled a meeting, and it didn’t happen – it shouldn’t ruin your day. Calmly make tea or coffee and spend 10-15 minutes analyzing why this happened. Perhaps the other person had a busy day, you didn’t consider that he or she might be late for other meetings, or you didn’t allow an extra 15 minutes knowing that the other person is always late. Changing plans is not a disaster but an opportunity to analyze your actions, reconsider your approach to scheduling, and consider how to avoid such risks.
Another function of a manager is to be a liaison and unite project participants with a shared vision and goals. Sometimes, you must act as an arbitrator, participating in meetings to listen to the points of view of different parties and help them reach an agreement.
The result is not necessarily tangible
The problem with constant meetings is that it is difficult to evaluate the work done because there is usually no tangible result, such as 70 lines of code written, or an agreement signed. In communications, everything is subjectively assessed. It’s when I leave a meeting satisfied because a minus has become a plus. For example, if we solve an urgent problem in the team or find a “zone of potential agreement”, we see the situation similarly. If asked to summarize the day, I could only show the calendar and briefly recount what I discussed with the developer, analyst, and client. But I can bring out an important idea to improve project implementation at a daily stand-up or lunch with the team.
And here, it is essential to note that a coffee break meeting is more of a relaxation and an opportunity to show emotions rather than a tool for solving complex work issues, especially since the pandemic, when most people have moved from the office to online. The “fate of the world” is not decided in the kitchen. But sometimes a conversation can’t go on without coffee, when, for example, the other person is nervous or doesn’t support the topic, and then it’s better to continue in a less formal atmosphere.
The duration of the meeting also doesn’t play a unique role. If you have nothing to talk about for two hours, you don’t have to sit through it, just as you don’t have to spend 30 minutes analyzing the technical implementation of a project. The productivity of a meeting is assessed by its quality and content. Yes, it may be meaningless to you personally if your role is unclear. To avoid this, you should always write down the meeting plan and the expected result. For example, discuss metrics, next steps, and implementation stages.
Focus on yourself
A PM’s job is 95% about communication and controlling people, time, processes, and keeping commitments throughout implementation. As a result, you want calm and peace after work. To prevent the severe consequences of “communication burnout,” project managers should focus on themselves and their feelings first. You are responsible for the project, and your state of mind affects the team. If, due to fatigue and high-stress levels, you overlook details, get nervous about every little thing, and everything falls through the cracks, the team also loses momentum. A manager should allow burnout, neither for himself nor his employees, but rather be in a good mood, with a bright head and a positive attitude.
