You’ve just been granted your license and now it’s time put your keys into the ignition. Before doing so, just know that your journey as a project manager has just begun.

PUTTING YOUR KEYS IN THE IGNITION

After passing the exam, I couldn’t wait to tell the world I joined the club, so I went home and appended the PMP title to the right of my name on my LinkedIn profile. And might I add, it sits well. But now what?

I went back to work the next day with a new air of confidence only to find the chaos behind my projects were still there: the campaign should have launched a week ago, the clients changed their mind on the design comps and wanted a mish mash of the second comp with imagery from the third and headlines from the first, and to throw in another wrench, the budget got slashed. Awesome. A day late and a dollar short. Yadda, yadda.

It was abundantly clear that the energy around me was a bit uneasy. Well actually, it was more like panic mode: red flag, raise it up the pole. The account teams did their best to assuage the client, the art directors and production teams huddled and spit out a series of design comps and layouts, the copywriter wrote more headlines and subheads, and the finance teams were engaged and had to figure out a way to help crunch those numbers. So where did I fit in?

TAKING THE DRIVER’S SEAT

With all hands on deck, the last thing the team wanted to hear was the need to implement a change request and update the schedule. I remember the one piece of advice my dad gave me when I first pulled out of the drive way at the age of 16, “Keep your eyes and ears open at all times.” Sticking with my dad’s mantra and heeding his advice, it was time to assess the situation and determine what value I can bring to my team. And quite frankly, being in a company that didn’t emphasize rigor around process or implement traditional project management, it only added to the challenge of trying to effectively meet the client’s needs yet maintain the team’s stamina. But as a project manager, I was able to extract some of the principles and elements of the agile framework that were conducive to the agency’s culture to kick the project back into gear. Below are a few techniques that helped ameliorate this situation.

Communication is key. As with all projects and relationships, communication is key. I took a step back and met with each team lead as they ferociously bailed us out of hot water with the client. Whether it was popping my head in as they took a breather or meeting them in the kitchen for a coffee break, hindering their creative juices from flowing was the least of my intentions. With pen and paper, I was able to jot down what each team member was currently working on and create a “hot list.”

Prioritizing your workload. With no more than five to ten items on the hot list, I created a spreadsheet and broke down the work into smaller, more manageable tasks (in project management lingo, ‘work breakdown structure’), that way the idea of delivering on each of these items didn’t seem so daunting. While the idea of leveraging a project management tool such as WorkFront or Basecamp helps to facilitate the process, this particular agency didn’t enforce usage across the teams. By keeping my eyes and ears open, I realized that it was important to find or create a tool that benefits your current team and organization – and putting together that “hot list” and pairing it with a bird’s eye view of the tasks as hand within a simple Excel spreadsheet seemed to do the trick.

Conducting daily scrums. What’s the point of creating a hot list and a spreadsheet of the tasks if it isn’t shared across the team? And what better way to share than by putting a meeting on the calendar – every single day? Before you cringe – and roll those eyes – just realize that these aren’t meant to add to your backlog of hours spent in meetings, nor should it detract from your ability to do work. Instead, consider these scrum meetings as “power meetings,” a standing 10-15 minute power meeting that involves only your working team – no clients – to inform each other of where you currently are and where you plan to be by end of day. This is a good way to bring visibility to the tasks at hand and keep the team aligned, and at the same time, keep the project moving. Anything aside from answering these two questions will require you to set aside your own time – away from the team at large.

Implementing feedback loops. Let’s face it, in today’s market, we’re already behind trying to keep up with marketplace demand and even less consoling, we’re constantly on the watch for our competitors trying to outpace us or plan for the next big thing. Business goals and priorities constantly shift – and so do our projects. Staying in close contact with your client will help assure you’re meeting their needs and not just delivering what’s in the statement of work.

Whether you’re under the gun to deliver to the client or operating at a snail’s pace (let’s hope not), it’s wise to actively conduct feedback loops with your client. Similar to the agile framework, where software development teams work in sprints to produce a series of product releases for the client, you’ll want to operate in a similar fashion of letting your team work and then presenting it to the client in rounds. With incremental feedback loops in place, you’ll be able to assess the whether your goals and your client’s goals are aligned.

CHANGING GEARS AND TAKING HER OUT FOR ANOTHER SPIN

With a few adjustments from the team and the client, we were able to switch gears and put the project back into its ‘drive’ mode. Sprinkling in a few techniques from the agile framework certainly did the team justice, but most importantly, heeding my dad’s advice helped enable me to clearly assess the situation and make these incremental improvements.

From my dad to you, and I pass this on to every project manager out there, whether you’re in marketing, IT or software development: “Keep your eyes and ears open at all times.”