My project management point of view

The company asked me to give a training to the project manager on the methods and opinions of the Project Manager in doing things. I adopted the Workshop method. Workshop is not a meeting mode, but a mode that focuses on communication and talks. After all, everyone is a project manager. I am not saying that my approach is correct, everything is my own experience, so I just want to share my experiences with each other. I made a handout on the content I want to analyze and hoped that more people could participate in this Workshop.
Can the project manager do well?

Can the project manager do well? Easy to do! Can the project manager do well? Not easy to do. The results of different people, attitudes, and methods vary greatly. Some people work as project managers, and the task is coming. No matter how many people are there, they cut the cake on average, and then count the team members. Each person takes one piece on average, he sat down and waited for their results. If the customer had a problem, he gently clicked on the email to transfer it, and everything was arranged. How easy it is to arrange tasks and chat in your spare time. Do you say that such a project manager can't do well? Another kind of project manager is important and trivial, and all the content of project development is well remembered, and the tasks are arranged according to the personal ability. Unfortunately, it's a pity that you have to work hard, I always think that people under the project are not safe to do things. I hate to rush them behind them with a whip every day, and all the people are worried. Such a project manager, it is estimated that a project is over, A part of the head is white, and it will be white-haired without many projects.

The two phenomena listed above are a bit extreme, but they often occur in the actual project process. Of course, their results are also different. The former project is estimated to fail more successfully, the latter is successful. But as a project manager, what we guarantee first is that the project itself can be completed on time and with high quality, and the project's profitability can also meet the expectations, therefore, no matter which method is used, it is advisable. In practice, the project manager's work and responsibilities should be said to be the most important part of the entire project team, so it is difficult to have such a good day to drink tea and send emails, after all, the work and commitment they have to do are in direct proportion to their wages.
How to look at Estimation

Many projects will find that there is a big difference between the number of invested personnel and the estimate of the number of workers in the early stage, which is 3-4 times the difference. Why? There may be many reasons in the process, such as insufficient preliminary estimates, frequent customer changes in the middle, and insufficient personnel capabilities. Among these factors, the preliminary estimation is a serious problem. On the one hand, the estimation is the prediction of the overall project time established with the customer during the project start-up stage. If the estimation has a problem, the impact on customers is also relatively poor, which is equivalent to opening a bad head. On the other hand, estimation also involves the cost of the entire project. It is not careless to talk about money.

So how can we make an estimation? Some people feel that they need less, so that they can make a good impression on the customer and see how good our capabilities are. This can be done so quickly. Some people will charge too much money and the high number of jobs will scare customers away. When estimating the number of jobs, there is a basic principle: try to approach the actual value as much as possible. The closer the actual value is, the more professional you will be. It doesn't mean that customers with fewer jobs will be more happy, just like shopping. If someone says that Huang Jin sells 50 yuan a gram to you, it is estimated that everyone will think this is a fake product. The customer's psychology is the same. They need a reasonable number of work numbers in estimation so that they can feel at ease. As for how many work numbers are signed in the actual contract, this is a matter of business, the customer may have a lower budget, but the total number of jobs cannot be changed. However, you can get a discount. In this way, the project is not carried out with an unrealistic plan at least in the startup phase.

It is indeed difficult to estimate how well it can be done. If we need to make a good estimation, we need to first have a very clear understanding of the customer's needs, which requires the project manager to invest relatively high in the early stage. In the early estimation, various business and technical details need to be considered, so the project manager and team members should be involved as much as possible. In the estimation stage, the problem is analyzed carefully. On the one hand, the estimation can be ensured to be reasonable, and on the other hand, the analysis can be done well in the early stage.
Account Management

Make sure that the number of employees is reasonable. In some projects, the proportion of employees involved in the project is very serious. In the estimation, the number of projects with five employees/month was originally two or more persons as planned. As a result, five persons were invested in the project, it took more than two and a half months. This project has been completed, but the cost increases due to the overprovisioning of staff. The project manager is required to manage these accounts.

Whether the project manager needs to be cost aware is required in my opinion. After all, as an enterprise, all projects have cost accounting, so the project manager needs to clear whether his team is making profits for the company, in this way, you can clear the importance of your team to the company and discover opportunities in the future.

Many people will argue that my team is working with some Junior personnel. If they are all big cows, I don't need so many people. Indeed, the quality and results of Junior and Senior are not comparable, but there must be a standard for staff redundancy, and there cannot be infinite redundancy. If Junior is not capable, you can add a backup engineer, but not everyone can have a backup. If so, the project manager needs to think about the work schedule.
Do not work hard and take credit

When a project team worked overtime every day and worked overtime every night, it was almost impossible for the team members to become leaders. Overtime is a common problem in the software development process and is difficult to avoid. There are also many reasons for project overtime, but the project manager should be clear about the root cause of the problem.

If your project is a strategic project of the company, and you want to win the customer, the company's command must be completed, at any cost, then such a project team is in the vanguard model, if you have worked hard and it is difficult to solve the problem, you should communicate with the company's top team and team members when starting such a project to explain the possible overtime situation, at the same time, the team members should be comforted and apply for such benefits from the company.

In some projects, due to misestimation or a large amount of overtime caused by customer problems, many project managers did not give feedback on the problem, but stressed that the team needs to complete the task. This phenomenon is not a responsibility, for team members, many situations are thankless. They work overtime day and night, but the company's cost accounting is often the most efficient part, so this kind of hard work still needs to be handled by the project manager with caution.

I said that stupid talents work overtime? This sentence is somewhat excited, but overtime is mainly divided into three situations. The first is that there are too many work arrangements, which exceeds the amount you can complete in the normal time, however, when determining your job, you did not report that you have encountered difficulties and suffered it silently, indicating that you have suffered a poor job and how nice your work is, however, this will affect the work arrangement and plan of the entire team and lead to overtime for others. If you have proposed it, but the work is still arranged like this, it is not your problem, overtime is also a helpless practice. Another kind of problem is the ability to work. If your work cannot be completed on time due to your ability, you will be stupid and feel that you need to learn to make up for your shortcomings. Third, if you want to do a good job, you need to know more about the content of some projects, or learn various deficiencies. Although this practice is not stupid, it is also the spirit of yugong's migration to the mountains.

Do not think that if your team is able to work overtime every day, someone will be able to see it, and someone will be able to understand you. If it is not your problem to work overtime in advance, then sudden overtime will occur in the future, from another perspective, more eyes will fall into the following: is there a problem with project management? Personnel problems? So the team members are tired and tired, and in the end they are often detained with poor capabilities. In addition, after the end of the year, after accounting for all projects, even if you raise your salary and raise your bonus, even if you raise your salary more than one year ago, those who have the most come to some sympathy, but there are often no substantive things. Therefore, efficiency is the most critical factor in evaluating a team. A team that can bring great efficiency to the company has a different tone of speech. By doing a good job in the project, we can satisfy our customers, maximize the benefits for the company, maximize the benefits for our team members, and make profits for the three parties. Therefore, our team should not work hard, and we should use the maximum ability to create the maximum efficiency for the company and get credit.
Does the project manager need technology?

Does the project manager need technology? This mainly depends on the project scale. Large-scale projects do not require technical support from the project manager, but may focus more on management and coordination. For small and medium-sized projects, the project manager should have the corresponding technical capabilities, especially for smaller projects, which may be higher.

First of all, because of the small scale, there is a situation where one person acts as multiple roles, so only a Project Manager can lead several so-called internal experts, in this way, there are serious problems in management, and the project manager is difficult to control the technical difficulties and risks of the project. Therefore, it is difficult to avoid unnecessary work arrangements, it is easy for all personnel to reasonably solve technical problems because there is no reasonable arrangement of personnel to solve technical problems and the entire team is waiting.

How can we arrange the work? This requires the person to understand the content and problems of the work, so that a reasonable arrangement can be made. If a large team may have other personnel to assist in the handling, however, for a small team, the Project Manager may be required to complete the process independently. In any case, it is necessary to avoid a situation where external leaders are competent. Therefore, each project manager is positioned as the team on which he acts as the agent to evaluate his or her own abilities. If his or her abilities are defective, he or she needs to make up his or her time.