All in Project Management
T shaped skillsets offer a single deep area of expertise, with a broad general base to support it. They can be great at helping bridge gaps, and filling in where others need support. Their depth, however, may not be as deep as someone with an I shaped skillset, and their general skills may not be strong enough in some situations.
“I” shaped skillsets are deep in on area of expertise, and light on others. This results in an individual very well versed in specific topics, but they may need support to fully maximize their impact.
We all build skill sets as we grow… but we can built them in different ways. Understanding the depth and breadth of our (and our teams) skills is important to our success.
Keeping an eye on details is important, but understanding how it all comes together, and how those details interact with everything else, is equally critical to success.
Keeping details in mind is incredibly important in life. Without them we can never really be sure what we’re doing… unfortunately many times though, we lose sight of this and suffer for it.
Planning is something we should be doing on a daily basis. Time taken to plan helps us focus our thoughts, helps avoid pitfalls, errors and mistakes later, and even makes us look good.
Communication is vital to our success, so don’t leave it to chance. When sending important messages, keep communicating until someone says “stop”.
Flexibility is an ever-more-important skillset. Bending yourself to a task lets you meet new folks, explore new areas, and even avoid things you don’t want to do.
Frequently back-and-forths are a signal that text communications are failing. When you notice this it’s best to change the medium - look for voice or video (or in person!) based communications to break the cycle.
One of the craziest things I’ve done to keep a project deadline was an overnight Seattle -> Portland roundtrip to upload a database… nothing like sleeping on the floor of your office while a script runs to get the blood pumping.
Many hands make light work. They also make for great opportunities to setup ad-hoc teams to help support a new process.
Leading and managing are both skills we pickup along the way. Neither one is inherently better than the other, but both are very useful to have.
Finding a way to prioritize work is critical to success. The one approach that should NEVER be taken is to have the tech teams determining the priority… they’ll almost always get it “wrong” and end up agitating partner teams.
Frequently technical resources are pull into projects at the last minute. This deprives the project team of a valuable viewpoint and raises blood pressure all around. Tech should be included as early as possible to best leverage their skills and avoid last minute scrambles.
Tech teams need to be brought problems to solve, not solutions to implement. Frequently business partners only present their ideas for solutions, which, at best, will steal time from actual problem solving, and at worst cause problems down the road.
Trust what you’re seeing/being told…but always verify it with your own testing.
