What am I going to eat for lunch? What am I going to eat for lunch? What’s on the menu for dinner. Wait, the menu for dinner? I think that’s my responsibility this week. I’ve spent too many days rummaging through cabinets trying to figure out what might constitute a semi-healthy meal.
So now I have a meal plan. I brainstorm the week before, create a shopping list, and conquer the week one meal at a time. It’s not enough to just make food. You also have to manage the food preparation process.
The work of project management.
Every day we come across things in our lives that require planning: vacations, meals, the kids’ school, and extracurricular activities. If there is no plan, something will be lost. A ball will be dropped. And you’ll be left wondering, “What happened?”
Enter project management.
Project management is a discipline dedicated to filling gaps and driving action. But invariably one question seems to open up any discussion of project management as a practice, one that we’ve probably never answered the same way twice:
What do we do?
Honestly? It depends.
On certain days, we spend the entire day jumping from spark to spark, preventing each one from becoming a full-fledged forest fire. Other days are more stable, we sit in 8-5 meetings managing people and expectations, and wondering what’s going on with the rest of our projects.
But most days, we help make troubleshooting easier. We take customer calls. We pass on information to our developer team. We schedule check-ins, review budgets, and review schedules and schedules.
As a project manager, it’s our job to keep all projects within our scope on time, on budget, and consistently moving forward.
Some days this is difficult. We work with humans, not machines, and humans, and projects, are affected by everyday variables.
Some days, though, things just “click.” The projects are on the right track and our team is crushing it. We make huge profits for our clients and it seems like everything we do pays off. These are the days that we, as project managers, live for!
Project management takes time.
Unsurprisingly, this work doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It takes time and resources are needed.
A project manager plans, estimates, and most importantly, communicates. Our goal as a practice is to make it easy and remove obstacles, to allow the designers and developers on your team to focus on the project itself.
When project management is done right, it can help every aspect of your business run more smoothly. Our developers can focus on the work that matters most to them, freeing them from the distractions of random requests, last-minute updates, and tasks that can potentially sidetrack projects or lose control.
A good project manager is not just a champion for her own team; they are also an advocate for the client’s team. They convey their needs. They close gaps. They help make strategic decisions that maintain the objectives of the project.
So when you’re looking at project costs, understand that the job of managing the project is just as important as the design and development. Just as development depends on design for structure and direction, both depend on project management for prioritization and communication.
Good project management matters.
This is all to say: great project management matters.
Project managers deliver success. it’s their job Regardless of the size of the project, a project manager builds and enables motivated teams that align around a project’s ultimate goals. And that team makes sure the right things are delivered, on time and on budget.
As you plan your meals for the week ahead, remember that this is project management. It’s what keeps the wheels on the bus and the sanity in your life. It’s not just for business. Project management is for life.
