Tips for New Project Managers

I spent my 30s managing enterprise IT projects. Here’s what I wish I knew at 29. 1/ Getting teams to simply talk is most of the battle. 2/ Getting sign-off (actual sign-off) on scope will save your bacon. 3/ The right time to think about risks is before you notice problems. 4/ No one is thinking about your project as much as you are. (/should be) 5/ When you have to ask ‘whose job is that?’, it’s probably your job. 6/ If someone asks you if you can do something ‘just this once’ it’s probably their job. 7/ If you do something once, it will be expected for every project in perpetuity. 8/ Understanding *why* someone is making an unusual request will give you insights. 9/ Seeing into the future is a superpower developed through experience. 10/ Senior PMs have good stories. Ask them to share. 11/ Every exec has (at least) two tones. The one they use among piers, and the one they’ll use 1:1. Don’t be startled. 12/ The first step in planning should be to define what you’ll do when things don’t go to plan. 13/ Planning is useful only if that plan quickly evolves into actual work. 14/ Repetition in meetings helps define expectations. Expectations help with accountability. Accountability is how you influence without authority. 15/ Holding people accountable—without being a jerk—is how you preserve relationships. 16/ Don’t ask if something is ‘in progress’. Ask ‘how much work is left’. Use percentages. 17/ Budget more time than you need. Then push hard to use less time than budgeted. 18/ Expect things to go sideways so you’re never surprised--and so you're always ready to act. 19/ Don’t burn bridges. Assume you’ll have another project with them. 20/ Trust is the single most valuable currency in project management. What are your lessons learned?  ____ 👋 Follow me Timothy Morgan for more about enterprise project management.

How do you set project teams up for success? My role on strategy consulting projects at Buro Happold has evolved to focus on this. Aligning goals, scope, fee, and schedule. Designing the governance and the process. Identifying the right roles on the client side and on our team. So, in that spirit, I thought I’d share a few helpful tactics to set projects up for success. If you’re already doing these on your projects, kudos. If not, maybe some of these are worth a try as consultants or clients! Maybe you have some ideas to add? 📆 Pre-kickoff: Have a pre-kickoff before the project actually starts – ideally about a month or so before. During this call you can review the process, key decisions to be made, governance, stakeholders to engage, and data needed. This gives the client time to get the data together and assemble committees and working groups. If you don’t do it, then you start off every project behind. Credit to Amanda Wirth Lorenzo for instituting this for us years ago. ✅ Templates: Wherever possible, send templates for clients to populate with key data. This way you get it back in the format you need. It may take a little more of your clients’ time upfront to do this rather than “send us you what we have” but it will pay off because you’ll answer clarifying questions and you’ll now have the data in a format you can use and compare to other projects. When you get data back, be sure to get a walkthrough from the client – don’t settle for a data dump without explanation or orientation. 🚦 Start/Stop: Start and stop things in a consistent way that orients people, reinforces the process, and allows for feedback and adjustment. Start every meeting with the schedule, where you are on it, and the last meeting/decisions recap. End every meeting with the next steps and prep for next meeting. Start every on-site engagement with a check-in with the PM walking through the visit’s planned activities and end it with a recap meeting with the executive sponsor. 👩⚖️ Leadership: Make sure your regular project management meeting includes a decision-maker in it who can give you direction in real-time. Project managers are great but if they can’t provide direction, then every question you ask in the meeting is answered with “I’ll check on that” and you spin your wheels a lot. You need real-time decisions to prioritize which data to analyze, who should attend what meeting, and other questions. 📖 Notes: Along the way, take your notes publicly on a flip chart, in the deck, on a shared doc, or in the chat on zoom/teams. This helps people feel heard and gives them a chance to validate that you heard them correctly. It also forces you do distill things in real-time and gets people out of feeling like a stenographer of detailed minutes of who said what rather than focusing on the essence and the actions to take. I hope these help set your teams up for success too.

I've trained 600+ project managers over the last 3 years. From budding teams in start-ups to large-scale projects in multinational corporations. Hre are 9 challenges and recommendations frequently shared. 1) Scope Creep Management It's daunting when project deliverables keep changing. Without clear boundaries and pushback, projects will derail. Highly recommend reading "Scope and Requirements Management" and "Effective PM and BA Role Collaboration" to solidify your scope management strategies. 2) Time Management Effective PMs understand that every minute counts. Design an “Ideal Project Week” and schedule critical tasks. Risk assessment? Schedule it. Stakeholder meeting? Schedule it. Documentation review? Schedule it. 3) Stakeholder Engagement Project Managers need to skillfully manage stakeholder expectations. Instead of just updating on progress, send out agendas ahead of stakeholder meetings. Focus on critical discussion points, and be prepared to address the top concerns. 4) Resource Allocation It's tempting to bring in the best talents, but ensure they align with the project's current needs. Don’t bring in a high-level consultant when you need hands-on expertise on the ground. 5) Driving Team Accountability Inconsistent team updates and feedback loops can hurt a project's momentum. As the PM authority, establish regular checkpoints. Embrace the mantra: “Consistency is the heartbeat of projects.” 6) Clear Project Objectives If stakeholders or team members can't quickly summarize the project's goal and outcomes, there’s a clarity issue. Consider methodologies like SMART goals to crystallize your objectives. 7) Handling Conflicts Project disputes, if not addressed promptly, can escalate and impact delivery. Address conflicts head-on. Familiarize yourself with techniques from "Crucial Conversations" for effective resolution. 8) Budgeting Managing finances is critical. A well-told narrative about your project’s ROI and value proposition is invaluable. Understand your budget's narrative, including how resources are allocated, potential ROI, and long-term project benefits. This narrative informs future budgeting decisions. 9) Project Strategy Many project managers grapple with succinctly defining their approach. A clearly articulated strategy not only provides direction but aids in stakeholder buy-in. I highly recommend diving into the "Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)" to sharpen your strategic skills. How do you prioritize and balance stakeholder engagement with ensuring timely project delivery, especially when faced with conflicting interests?

Moving into a management role is a major change... Here's a first-hand account of my recent experience and what I have been learning ~~~~~~~~ I recently moved into the role of Acting Engineering Project Manager. This is my first time in a formal management role, and I have been learning every day. The scope of my new role spans the execution of all aspects of the project, including: ▪︎software ▪︎hardware ▪︎human factors ▪︎safety ▪︎cybersecurity ▪︎digital transformation This broad scope keeps every day dynamic, challenging, and interesting... and with the expanded scope also comes new growth areas. ~~~~~~~~ Two months into the role, here are my three major learning curves: 1. Change from executing tasks to enabling the team 🎯 The biggest change has definitely been moving from executing my own tasks to planning them for others. My focus is now on enabling team members to hit their milestones. Sometimes I have to resist my urge to jump in myself; a conductor is not the one playing all the instruments. Their focus is on conducting the orchestra. 2. Handling increased complexity 📊 As a manager, the daily complexity is much higher. Often, it feels like balancing many spinning plates. Prioritization takes on a different meaning when *everything* is important. Timeblocking my calendar and sending myself emails of To-Dos has been very helpful. There is no easy solution to these situations, and I am treating each one as a learning opportunity. 3. Achieving team flow 🔗 Communication is key to keeping the team informed and aligned towards the same goals. Meaningful meetings are important for this synergy. I have been doubling down on my meeting skills. These include sending out clear agendas, taking thorough notes, and tracking action items to closure. With a wider field-of-view, it is easy for me to overload a team member with information. So I have been working on pacing information and sharing with intent. Team flow requires clarity. Clarity comes from delivering relevant information in a concise manner. ~~~~~~~~ Two months down ✅️ What is something you remember from transitioning between different types of roles? #engineering #projectmanagement #fieldnotes

When you’re accountable but not in charge as a PM This is one of the silent struggle of many Project Managers. One of the most persistent challenges we face as PMs(this is also applicable to Scrum) is managing poor #performance on a project team without direct #authority over the individuals involved. Yes, you’re responsible for the outcomes, timelines, budget and deliverables. But the people doing the work report elsewhere.🙃 So what do you do when performance is slipping and the #project is on the line? Here’s how I’ve approached it over time: ✅ Lead with project impact, not personal judgment. Focus on how delays or quality issues affect project dependencies and commitments, not the individual’s shortcomings. → “When the database design is delayed, it holds up development and puts our go-live date at risk.” ✅ Use your PM tools as leverage. ↳Dashboards, status reports, and steering committee updates bring natural accountability. Visibility often drives improvement. ✅ Set clear expectations early. ↳At kickoff, establish deliverable standards, communication norms, and escalation paths. When performance dips, you're not starting from scratch, you're referring back to agreed norms. ✅ Stay connected with functional managers. ↳Check in regularly so that when issues arise, you can raise them with specific impact and evidence. Those relationships make a real difference. ✅ Structure your project around your strengths. ↳Assign critical-path tasks to high-reliability team members. For underperformers, just break work into smaller chunks with more checkpoints and fallback options. ✅ Document consistently. ↳Every missed handoff, scope issue, or conversation gets recorded. Oh yes! This is about protecting the project and enabling functional managers to take informed action. ✅ Use retrospectives wisely. ↳Sometimes team feedback surfaces patterns that direct confrontation doesn’t. Retrospectives can be a powerful tool for collective accountability. At the end of the day, our greatest source of influence is the visibility we have as PMs. We see the full picture, where things connect, where they’re lagging, and what the consequences are. 📍And with that perspective, we can lead without needing the org chart to validate it. Isn't that amazing?? Lol I'd love to hear from you. Ever had to fix performance issues on your project team without formal authority over the person involved? Follow 👉 Benjamina Mbah Acha for insights that help you plan, execute, and deliver projects with confidence.

I have been a part of 100+ construction projects. Great Project Managers are: - 1. Master communicators: If you can’t communicate, your jobs will be over budget, behind schedule, and filled with wasted time. Use this simple rule of thumb: When in doubt, communicate. - Walk the job and find the foreman - Make the phone call - Send the email You will never regret it. - 2. Emotionally Intelligent: Emotional intelligence is so much more than knowing how to make people like you. It’s understanding your own emotions. It’s understanding how what you say impacts others. It’s understanding that having empathy is more effective than making threats. World-class Project Managers have world-class emotional intelligence. - 3. Focused on what they can control: 99% of Project managers focus on the 99% of things that are out of their control. Great Project Managers focus on the 1% of things that can control. - Your attitude - Your effort - Your schedule - Your intentions Everything else is noise. - Being uncommon is how you differentiate yourself and run great projects. Communicate relentlessly, be in touch with your emotions, and control what you can control. Don’t let anyone get in the way of you being you. You’ll go way further.

Here are some real life examples I’m ungatekeeping that you can implement in your current role if you are trying to become a healthcare project manager - Take on a project: Example—> implement a tracker the team can use to identify hospital readmissions, why are they happening? Why do we care? Why is this a problem? - Improve a process/ eliminate waste: example—> is there a heavy manual task you are doing that AI can assist with? - Put a tech stack to use: Practice with tools like Mobday .com where you can create and track project plans. - Cross Collaborate: perhaps you want to make a flyer educating patients about your hospital readmission tracking in order to improve patient outcomes so you work with the marketing department to develop this flyer -Data Analysis: track your patients that readmitted, why, approx length of stay, diagnosis, discharge deposition from hospital, etc. Put it into an Excel sheet. Trend the data notice anything? - Coordination of stakeholders: in this case, it’s the patience, the marketing team, and the other clinicians working on the project, leadership, and then once you have the results and finding of your project, presenting them to different departments You dropped it By actively developing these skills, you’ll establish a solid base for a formal role in project management. Emphasize these experiences on your resume -(with real data) and during interviews to prove your capability! #HealthcareTransition #HealthcareProjectManager #Non-Clinical #NonClinicalCareerCoach

Have you ever inherited a project already in flight? Take the reins with confidence. Here are five steps to help you: 1️⃣ Gather Intelligence: Meet with the previous project manager (if possible) and key stakeholders. Understand the project goals, scope, budget, timeline, and risks. 2️⃣ Assess the Team: Get to know the team members, their roles, etc. 3️⃣ Review the Plan: Scrutinize the existing project plan. Is it realistic? Are deadlines achievable? Be prepared to adjust the plan based on your findings. 4️⃣ Communicate Clearly: Hold an initial meeting with the team to introduce yourself, outline your expectations, and answer any questions. Maintain open communication with stakeholders throughout the project's lifecycle. 5️⃣ Focus on Progress, Not Perfection: Don't get bogged down by what might have been done differently. Focus on what needs to be accomplished moving forward. If you ever took over a project in flight, what are some strategies have you used? Join the conversation in the comments. #projectmanagement #leadership #communication