Your mom’s best friend’s project manager! Key skills for a successful career in project management and management - Semyon Kolosov

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up. Then he or she systematically removes any obstacles to keep the team steam locomotive running on the tracks. Whether it’s a bottleneck in the process, client-side bureaucracy, or a designer didn’t like the way a developer reacted to his zodiac sign. If it’s hindering the project, you need to fix it or eliminate it. And if it’s not working, then you need to escalate. PM is perfect, but not omnipotent. Until it’s time to escalate, he’s always focused on improving the process. Drives it and helps the team solve problems. As Churchill said, “I love it when something happens. If it doesn’t happen, I do everything I can to make it happen”.

      Decision-making

      The ideal PM avoids intuitive decisions and stomps for rational thinking. He analyzes, considers all factors and chooses the best option. A decision is a choice with consequences. And the PM is responsible for them. He is not afraid to make decisions and doesn’t procrastinate because he has a system for making decisions in general and specifically for the project. This helps to neutralize cognitive distortions and escape the quagmire of inaction. This approach works in all complex and uncertain situations. It helps in making constructive and informed decisions. For an ideal PM, decision making is the courage to just take everything upon himself, because the decision is his, not a way to show his coolness, like, I’m the boss and I make decisions. It is above all knowledge about thinking and decision making process. An ideal PM can easily explain the logic of decision making and his/her actions in case of negative consequences.

      Project portfolio management

      A project doesn’t come alone. More often than not, a PM has one large project or several medium-sized ones. In every company, the size of a project is a subjective concept, but it doesn’t matter, because every project has a different team, client, rhythm and dynamics. There are times when five projects can be safely controlled by coming once to a meeting with the team, and there are times when one small project sucks all the energy until the end of the working day. The ideal PM knows that the ideal project is the one he doesn’t need right now. If he sees that his resource is critically short, he will reason with you at the beginning. Often, though, you have to save the world and take on a new project. At least temporarily. Then you need to talk about risks, a backup plan and the period until the load stabilizes. When an ideal PM leads several projects, he doesn’t jump between projects like a wolf after eggs. He strives for harmony and organization between projects. So that there is no overlap in communication, resources, and key milestones. Often you can’t get everything set up in unison and have to juggle priorities, meetings, time and resources. But for the ideal PM, this is not a problem. Once you’ve juggled, you can continue to work smoothly, because he knows what he can adjust in the project to manage his workload. Sometimes you have to take a risk and delegate without preparation, but it helps to gain experience for ideal PMs who are starting out.

      Session 4.

      Team management

      The goal is clear – to ensure that the team works efficiently and comfortably so that project, team and company goals are achieved. Managing roles and assigning responsibilities in a team contributes to more efficient work, better communication and reduced risk. But to do this, you need to realize that a team is not just about the roles needed to achieve results. There are people on the team. With their values, experience, cockroaches, expertise, strengths and weaknesses, attitude to you, to the company, etc. It is not possible to describe roles and assign tasks to everyone. Everything is much more complicated. A team of ordinary specialists can achieve super results, while a team of stars sometimes can’t even start doing something. We are dealing with human nature and efficient processes. The ideal PM knows how to bring these things together. He knows how to lead the team according to Bruce Tuckman’s model and not interfere with the work, so that everyone in the team reaches his goal and gives 100% for the overall result.

      Atmospheric management

      Kurt Cobain said, “You can survive anything if you pick the right song”. I’m saying that any difficulties on a project can be survived if you find the right PM. And if he picks the right meme, the team can survive anything. No kidding. Maintaining a cool atmosphere in the team is a tough task. The PM should definitely eliminate all the problems and blockers that depend on what the PM and the team can affect. Uncertainty, bad processes, problems, etc. Everything else is an art that allows ordinary people to do incredible things. It could be the culture, the atmosphere, or the PM’a leadership skills. Everyone finds their own approach. A key metric for me is how people on the team relate to each other. PM will explain the goals, plan and organize the process, but if there is no atmosphere of support and mutual assistance in the team, there will be no unified mechanism. And neither the values on the company website nor supervision will help. The people you saw at the interview, where they told you how they want to grow and do good for society, disappear on the first day of work. The work is done by other, real people.The ideal PM understands this. He creates a positive environment where every team member feels comfortable and important. He maintains open communication where people can express ideas and opinions and resolve conflicts and disagreements constructively. Where no one is afraid of making mistakes and doesn’t make the same mistakes twice. Atmosphere is closely related to culture. Together they allow PM to create an environment and positive social pressure. Where you don’t have to specifically motivate someone or be demanding. Where you don’t look for blame or reasons, but decide what to do. Where everyone understands each other’s strengths and weaknesses, comes to the rescue and helps you grow. Doing cool results should be fun. For everyone, not just PM.

      Infrastructure and teamwork

      Once roles and areas of responsibility are assigned, processes, approaches, principles, rituals and communication are aligned, the ideal PM needs to provide the infrastructure and information sharing, i.e. create the physical part of the system that the team will work with. This can include folders in cloud storage, accesses, a task manager, a financial model, collaboration services, and so on. The team should be provided with everything they need to work. Then you have to build the interaction with the system and between team members. It’s cool when a project is done and someone goes on vacation, but the work doesn’t stop. Because the vacation is accounted for in the plan, everyone knows where the necessary artifacts are and where to put new ones. Anyone has access to where they need to go, without too many questions in chat. An ideal PM doesn’t build big systems, he looks for a balance so that there are no services for services’ sake. He also skillfully divides the system into parts and divides responsibility between team members. Everyone keeps the system running, simplifies and fixes it if needed. An ideal PM has a backbone of basic artifacts and solutions for organizing the work of the team under his cloak. He does not reinvent the wheel every time, but adapts proven tools.

      Facilitation

      There is always a lot of communication in a project. The ideal PM doesn’t mind discussing pets and talking about any topic. He is not a douche who interrupts a smol-talk with the words, “Colleagues, let’s get down to business already.” For every meeting, he has a purpose, an agenda, a lineup of attendees, and the materials needed. But when the discussion starts drifting away from the purpose, he can non-toxically bring everyone back to the purpose of the conversation. This kind of PM knows how to make meetings effective. So that there is no discussion for the sake of discussion, and the amount of uncertainty, tasks and questions after the meeting is reduced, not increased. And if he does everything right, but participants still don’t talk in the right direction, avoid solutions and the next steps are unclear, then it’s a difficult topic. The ideal PM will always ask the right and uncomfortable questions so that the substance becomes easier to talk about. And problem identification and decision making was done through constructive discussion.

      Task setting and delegation

      Management is the art of doing other people’s work. In a good way. There is no way to do it without task setting and delegation.

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