Alexa's Blog

Well, thats a good news right ? Your position is much better now, you have team to lead and why not, your salary get a bit or substantially higher. That´s a good thing right. Many people working in different areas dream to advance in their careers and in software development companies this is the next level after a team leader in most of the cases. How do you get here ? I don´t think that someone can say that is an easy path and are many ways to get here. One of them, I think I can say the most common one, is to act like a programmer, getting experience and after a few years you can get here. Other guys just jump in after they finish the school take some courses (expensive ones) and found a a good job where they can act.

Whatever your path was I will try in my next posts to tell you how to prepare for your new project manager function. However, before going and reading please keep in mind that again, everything I will write down here is based on my own experience and please do not expect to found here some miraculous methods or tools. As you will see, there are no such things and I wan to thank you to all who will go down and read next part of this first article.My intention is to come with one chapter once a week so just come and check for the new stuff. Also I will really appreciate any comments and opinions.I really wan to know your stories, where you have win and where you have loss in your project day by day fightings.

Chapter 1.
Now I´m Project Manager

First of all, I wish you welcome tho this branch. As you will discover, like any jobs, this one will give you big satisfactions but at the same time you will have a lot of bad days.Good things are easy to go over and we leave them easily behind.The bad things are the ones that make us to learn the most and that´s experience we get.To learn from the past mistakes and apply everything we know in the new incoming projects. There are many methodologies and tools used in software project management and each one claims that is the best for you. They are somehow right because whatever method you will choose, there is a big chance to success if you will follow it.But we will talk about that later.Right now I will try to underline what you will need as a person to get in.

• Good Communication skills
• To be a good listener
• To be well organized
• Self motivated
• Have some team leader qualities
• Able to work and integrate into a team

Hmmm… looks like a common known list whenever you look for a new job post inside most of IT companies right ? I know that many of you can come and complete the list with many others, but I think that the ones I listed are the most relevant. Why ? Let´s go a bit over them…

Good Communication Skills

Why are so important ? I think that most people, and especially our clients count on us to understand their requests and explain them as best we can what we need and how we will complete the project in time and in budget. From this point of view the communication process and how we will do it became a crucial factor. In those days, when outsourcing is used a lot, knowing the customers language is another important point. As many of you knows there are cases where is hard to make yourself understandable even to your best friends or team mates. What about talking to another person located in another part of the world using a bad phone line, or just writing on a chat window in a language which is not your naturally one ? Of course, knowing customer language very well might help you, but are you able to think and express yourself in that language also ? If you can then you have a big plus. Of course the communication is not only talking.There are many things associated with it, like our voice (some have a pleasant voice, other don´t), your gesticulation, etc… In the face to face communication those ones makes our life much easier, but when we talk with a remote person the things are different.
Also, do not forget that you will have to communicate with your own team which is also important.To be able to communicate them what the customers needs, might be a nightmare sometimes.
In conclusion, to be able to communicate is a prime factor for a project manager.He must be able to communicate with the members of his team even if some of them are not good listeners, or tend to focus on other things not relevant for the project or their task.Team members might vary in experience, abilities and domain of activity.To make them work together as a real team you will need to communicate a lot .Believe me on that

To be a good listener

Why that counts ? I know that many of you think that they are good listeners. I thought that about me also until I was to a project management training course about two years ago.There I have discovered that I was not so good as I thought. Why ? Because I have the naturally impulse to stop people before they finish what they have to say.I had to work a lot to fix this problem and believe´ me is a hard damn thing. Another point is to be able to “register” and “replay” as much you can from the talker original words.Don´t forget that in most cases you act like a proxy between your customers and your team.How much from what a customer explains you is shared to your team mates in the right form? We all have a different way to understand different things and in many cases happen to me to discover that I really don´t understand right a request even if initially everything looked pretty clear. Be aware of that because is a project killer in many cases. As a general rule try to listen with attention and ignore everything else when someone is talking to you.Take as much notes as you can and don´t interrupt the person in front of you even you you have the “felling” that he´s going in the wrong direction.Sometime is true, but how you will know if he can´t finish what he wan to say ?

To be a well organized

I think this one is obvious. A project manager must organize and lead a team in order to complete one or more projects. In most of the cases a team can be involved in many projects at the same time, or just get interrupted because a customer have an urgent problem or need a very urgent update to an older project. How you will deal with that ? Hard to say, because are many factors involved, but a good organization of your daily tasks and your team people can help you go over this problem. Some people which are not so well organized can still go because this is something that can be learned.Using some tools will also help you.Such a tool might be a personal agenda or a calendar or whatever works best for you.There are no rules here other than your company impose you (if that´s the case).

Self Motivated

I think most of you agree that self motivation is somehow a general term used when most of the companies search to hire people. Whatever your job will be, you just need to be Self Motivated right ? But why they ask for this ? I think that so called self motivated persons are the ones that really like what they are doing.Most of people consider that the ideal job for them would be the place where they can combine their work with they hobby.Well, it´s a bit hard for me to think that planning, talking with customers, taking with your team, keep a lot of meetings and other things like that might be a hobby for someone, but I am sure that there are a few out there. However if you like what you are doing and the company has a contribution in different ways to your personal motivation it´s a very good thing and you can consider yourself “Self Motivated”.Or not ?

Have some team leader qualities

Only some ? Yes, because nobody has born with all qualities.Team leadership is a hard task because we are working with many people in different areas of activity and with different personalities.Keeping all working together and avoid conflicts is not an easy job.As we will see a bit later this can be considered a real art and history have shown as some real leaders.In any case, for starters it´s important to know that team leading require all the above points and a lot of learning about inter-human relationship.That´s why I said that only some qualities are required.The rest of them will follow from the day by day experience and learning.You can became a good leader, because is something that can be learned and I strongly believe that.

Able to work and integrate into a team

This is all about your success as a project manager. Does not mater how well you can plan, estimate or how smart you are.If you are not able to integrate and get accepted by your team as a leader you will fail.You must remember all the time that your team is all that matter for your projects and your personal success. All your communication, organization, personal motivation and leader qualities count only if you can propagate them at the team level. They can go you up or down and they will judge all your actions depending on their own personal satisfactions. Your part of the job will be to keep them motivated to work and follow you.When they will do, you can say “Wow, no I have my own team”.

This first chapter ends here.I rally wan to know what do you think and if you have any requirements for future articles.I know there are a lot of them, but who know? Maybe I have another point of view and that can help someone.I would be very glad if that happen.

Good luck to all of you.