What should I do as an IT project manager?

What should I do as an IT project manager?

Project managers are managers of specific projects, and they constantly improve their leadership skills in their work. At the same time, this profession has both rights and responsibilities. They mainly carry out background investigation on the project, collect and sort out relevant data of the project, make demand planning, write project investigation report and information summary, carry out complete system design of project components or modules, contact relevant project units and relevant technical experts, formulate project feasibility study report, cooperate with each other to formulate and declare project application materials, and organize project teams to complete project tasks. The following is what I arranged for you. Welcome to read!

What should IT project managers do?

I often see such a project manager, busy all day, the phone ringing off the hook, giving dozens of instructions in an hour, as if the team he leads can't live without him for a day. Then he will say "I'm busy" or "I'm tired" and "I need more hands". Such a project manager should always ask himself every detail, even if someone is under his command, do you think he can not be tired?

There are even such incidents. The manager of R&D department personally participates in the coding of project software. If there are only one or two projects, it may be ok. Imagine if you can participate in the specific technical work of more than a dozen projects. Have you considered other problems caused by the department manager's participation in specific projects? The daily affairs of the department are not handled, and no one pays attention. Other projects of the department are not assisted by the project manager, and no one plans the future of the department. There are many behaviors similar to project managers: for example, managers who are good at sales are always uneasy about their sales staff and feel that the following people are always not so reliable; A well-written project manager always drafts documents by himself, because what the secretary drafts always makes him look down upon, and so on.

As a result, the manager is in a hurry all day and the management efficiency is very low. Managers have no time to think about the development of the department, and subordinates feel untrustworthy, cautious, afraid to cross the line and have no enthusiasm.

From this, I think Liu Bei is not as good as Zhuge Liang in writing and Zhao Macelo Wong in martial arts, but he can use people and win people's hearts. I'm afraid everyone who is a project manager needs to learn from Liu Bei, even if you are excellent in some aspects. You can pass on your experience to your subordinates, and don't be afraid of their mistakes. Although it is difficult and sometimes unnecessary to do it, since a person is given that position and salary, he should be given full play. You can't work for them, and you can't "rob" the power you pay them. I remember that when a reporter interviewed Mr. Wang, the president of CA Company, Mr. Wang said that he had no personal mailbox so far. When the reporter was surprised to ask him why, he said, "There is no need. I have good business executives who will handle the daily affairs of the company. I want to have enough time to consider the company's development strategy. I don't want to be disturbed by some trivial matters. " Wang is an excellent manager, so CA is where it is today.

A well-done project manager may not look so nervous at work every day. So some subordinates may ask such questions: "We are very busy, what are you doing?"

Project manager, the person responsible for the team's mission and development. Therefore, its primary mission should be to create a real whole and a dynamic whole that is greater than the sum of its components. That is, people often say management. Through management, the impossibility of nature 1+ 1 > 2 can become possible. What should the project manager do to accomplish this mission?

First, a project manager must first set goals, that is, determine the goals of the team. Only when he knows where to go can he get there. Determine what the goal is, and the goal should be able to effectively support the team's responsibilities and help the team's development. It is also necessary to convey the goal to everyone in the team, so that they can realize their responsibility and importance in the process of achieving the goal.

Second, a project manager needs to analyze the activities, decisions and relationships needed to organize the work, that is, how to arrange the work. He needs to classify the work, determine the main and secondary tasks and priorities, and assign appropriate personnel to carry out the work.

Third, the project manager should encourage and exchange information. He combines people with various functions into a team, which needs to motivate subordinates, exchange information at the same level, and coordinate the completion of work.

Fourth, the project manager needs to measure and evaluate team performance and individual performance. First of all, it is necessary to establish a measurement standard, which not only pays attention to the performance of the team, but also requires paying attention to the individual's work and helping him do his job well. The project manager informs his subordinates, superiors and colleagues of the importance and results of the measurement.

A project manager should cultivate people, including himself. A project manager knows the strengths and weaknesses of his subordinates better than others, knows their training needs better, and often has the necessary skills to help them improve their work performance. Only when the skills of his subordinates are improved, the efficiency of the whole team can be improved, and the members of the team can be developed, so that they can devote themselves to their work with enthusiasm and responsibility. Managers need to make training plans and implement them.

In our industry, many project managers are given this responsibility only after they have excellent skills in business or technology. They may not have received management education. I hope this article can give them some thoughts and understanding of their responsibilities.

What should the project manager do and what not to do?

1. Do things with goal orientation.

Know what to do first, then know how to do it. Goal is an important feature of project management. The working principle of the project manager is to take the project goal as the center and do anything that is conducive to the realization of the project goal without violating the professional ethics and code of conduct of the project manager.

There are short-term goals and common goals. Completing the current project according to the goal may be a short-term goal, and bringing out an efficient team in one year may be a long-term goal. For the project manager of non-temporary projects, it is more important to focus on the long-term goals of the project, rather than paying too much attention to the short-term interests of the current project. Only by recognizing this can we realize the importance of training, coaching, teamwork, spontaneity, team language and rules in the whole project.

2. Break down your own defined goals

For software projects, the project manager will define that the failure rate of software products after release is less than 0.5 /KLOC code according to business or user needs. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to analyze the factors affecting the goal in combination with the time process of the project. The quality of deliverables in each stage, the leakage of defects, the level of testing, the change and stability of requirements, the requirements design and development specifications in the early stage, team rules and the responsibilities of developers can all affect the realization of this goal.

The achievement of an overall goal can never be achieved simply by raising one influencing factor. There are still positive and negative effects among various factors, which must be considered comprehensively and systematically. Determine the expected interval level of each element, and then put these expected values into the plan for tracking and control. What this series of processes want to show is that everything you do has a purpose, serves the original defined goal, and is by no means out of nothing.

3. Specific practical problems

First of all, the degree of attention to risks and crises is far greater than that to problems. It is not that solving problems is not important, but that project managers should manage risks more, eliminate hidden dangers more and prevent risks from becoming real problems. The project manager must have enough foresight and keen insight to find all kinds of signs and crises. Before the crisis, the response measures are often just the project manager talking with members or organizing a training on procedures, but the losses caused by the crisis will far outweigh the cost of risk response.

The project manager should be a coach rather than a leader. Managers should know how to authorize, but the project manager is more concerned that authorization will not affect the progress and quality, so the project manager certainly does not do everything by himself, nor does he blindly authorize nothing, but acts as a good coach. Let project members have the ability to do everything and do things responsibly. If it takes only 1 hour to do it by yourself and one day to teach team members to do it, it will take one day to teach them how to do things correctly from the perspective of team use.

The contents of PMBOK's nine knowledge systems are all things that need to be considered in the project. There is a key word in it: project management team, which is composed of the core members of the project. It is necessary to distinguish what is done by the project manager and what is done by the project management team. Another concern is the granularity of doing things. The tracking of project tasks is what the project manager should do, but the project manager should determine the granularity of his tracking tasks according to the project objectives. If the granularity is too fine, it can be tracked by project members or team leaders. What a project manager should do is not a simple practical guide for project managers and project members.

In a team, as a team leader, you will:

1) Avoid damaging team goals on political issues.

2) Demonstrate individual commitment to team goals.

3) Don't dilute the work of the team with too many priorities.

4) Treat team members fairly.

5) Willing to face and solve problems related to poor performance of team members.

6) Take an open attitude towards employees' new ideas and new information.

As a team member, you should:

1) shows a true understanding of individual roles and responsibilities.

2) Demonstrate objectives and make judgments based on facts.

3) Cooperate effectively with other team members.

4) Give priority to team goals and personal goals.

5) Demonstrate the desire to work hard for the success of any project.

6) Willing to share information, feelings and generate appropriate feedback.

7) Give appropriate help to other members when they need it.

8) Show high standards to yourself.

9) Support team decision-making

10) Take the lead in striving for the success of the team.

1 1) The understanding of actively responding to others' feedback is a binary problem, which is more related to the granularity of work and management related to the project objectives.

Experience summary of IT project manager

I have been a project manager for many years, and I feel that the most important thing in this job is to understand what is local conditions and improve the situation. Only the most suitable, there is no right or wrong. The most taboo of project managers is perfectionism, especially those who are technical, who like to find standard answers, delay the progress of work and are at a loss. The following are some personal experiences of my project, which I will write for your guidance and improve my level in the discussion.

The initial stage of the project is the most important stage. When a project manager takes over a new project, he should first learn as much as possible about the project from all aspects, such as:

1. What is this project, what it will do, who proposed it and what problems it aims to solve. In the case that many domestic customers are immature, don't imagine the goal of the project according to its name. A project called "Office Automation" is likely to find that what customers actually need is a computer production management auxiliary information system one month after you enter the market. The more detailed the work of understanding the situation in the early stage, the less surprises and the less risks of the project.

2. Who is involved in this project, such as investors, specific business stakeholders, operators after the completion of the project, technical directors, etc. In many projects, in addition to the complex structure of the owner's unit, other units will be involved, such as engineering supervision companies and the owner's industry authorities. The project manager needs to know everyone's thoughts and expectations about this project. Knowing the views and expectations of all parties in advance can help you to analyze who will support you in what way and who will oppose you for what purpose when you encounter problems in the project, so as to make preparations in advance, unite friends to fight against the enemy and let things develop in the direction you want. There are no eternal friends and enemies, only consistent interests, which must be kept in mind as a project manager;

3. After basically knowing the customer's situation, the next thing is to understand the views of all parties in our company on this project. The first is whether the senior leaders attach importance to it, which determines whether the company will provide the most powerful support according to your requirements when you need resources. What you need to do is to know the actual expectations of the company for this project. Do you want to make the project bigger and bigger or make money? Whether you want to do a model project or just perfunctory, the attitude of company leaders to the project determines your strategy for doing this project, which will have a direct impact on your project planning;

Before making the overall project plan, you should also roughly calculate your own resources. The first is time. Nowadays, the market competition is fierce, and many projects are often required to be completed in an almost impossible time range. For this, you should fully consider it when making the risk control plan of the project. Secondly, personnel, according to the project budget and past experience, roughly calculate how many roles the future project team will have, whether each role is currently occupied by the company, whether it can be fully utilized by this project, whether it is necessary to recruit some other personnel, and the preparation for recruitment should start as soon as possible. Finally, the preparation of some equipment, the key equipment needed for the project should be booked as early as possible, no matter what happens to the equipment and others, it is a waste of your time.

It's time to make a project description. A good project specification should not only clearly describe what to do (mainly about what to do, not how to do it), but also explain how to check thoroughly. In other words, it not only explains what to do, but also lets the customer's business people (who generally don't know the technology) know what the project does. In short, the project description describes what the project has done, to what extent everything has been done, and how to check each result.

6. Is it time to make a master plan? No, now that you know the customer's goals and the resources you have, you need to fully communicate with your manager and customers about the resources before making a plan. Because many resources are still unclear, you need to write a report to analyze the risks of this project and the demand for resources in detail. What will happen if some problems can't be solved? If the resources are insufficient, the top management should change the strategy and increase the investment in this project. Even if conditions permit, some companies will give up this project. In a word, no one can accomplish the impossible task. If the project manager can't find the risk as early as possible, then he can only be a martyr.

7. Knowing what to do, your chips and your overall strategy for this project, it's time to set up a project team. Many project managers have no right to choose their own team members, so try to exert your influence to find those you want. The composition of members varies greatly according to different projects, so it is difficult to have any specific requirements. However, there must be people who are proficient in customer business. Many small projects, this person is the project manager himself, and large projects will be equipped with industry experts, so that communication with customers will not be like a chicken and a duck, and both sides can understand each other. What I often see is that our technicians are full of technical terms when talking with customers, and as a result, customers are at a loss. In turn, he accused customers of not knowing technology. In fact, customers who know what they want to do are already very good customers, and customers who don't know what they want to do, let alone how to do it, abound, but understand that customers choose you, not you. Only when you are with customers can you get paid and be calm.

8. Now you have to face three groups of people: your leader, your team members and your customers. Your main job will be to communicate with these people and let them know what you are going to do and when you want them to prepare. Since communication is so important, it is also important to clarify the principles of communication in advance. Many communication principles are hidden rules. If you have been in a department for a long time, it is natural to apply these rules. However, you are now facing multiple departments and even multiple units. If you don't make the communication rules clear, you will suffer in the future. The following things seem boring, but they are actually very useful: the first thing is to stipulate the way and medium of information flow, whether it is push or pull. Push means that the project manager will actively release information, whether by phone, email or in writing, to ensure that the information is delivered to everyone. This situation is suitable for small projects with few people; Pulling means that the project manager is like a web server. If you need any information, ask him. Of course, no project manager makes himself so tired. He will publish information by publishing information to the public media. This is a simple whiteboard, and a little more complicated is the public information interaction area of the project. The unspoken rule is, if I send it to you, don't say I didn't tell you. This seems boring, but it actually involves the responsibility of incomplete information transmission. Of course, these are general ways, not absolute. In general, active communication and passive acquisition coexist, especially for leaders, the project manager should actively communicate with them. The second problem is documentation. Many people are afraid to write documents, but the project manager must keep in mind the truth that "a good memory is worse than a bad one". Why is it sometimes unclear? Because there is no evidence. Therefore, the project manager should make it clear to the customer at the beginning that some documents must be signed, such as the project manager's project log, which should be signed by the customer at least once a week. In addition, everything that has reached an understanding of * * *, such as meeting minutes and even leaders' speeches, should be written into documents and signed by both parties, so that when the dispute ends in the future, it can be well documented. Remember: what you said is the same as what you didn't say. It only happens after you write it down and sign it. There are still some problems, such as the report you submitted, which gave leaders (including their own leaders and customer leaders) a multiple-choice question. As a result, the leader refused to approve it, which made you feel at a loss and delayed the progress. At this time, you can wait, but you should pay attention to leaving records and indicating the responsible person; In addition, if you reach an agreement with the leader at the beginning: if you don't get a reply from the leader three days after the instruction is submitted, the other party will agree, so you have a lot of initiative. Another example is the approval process of different events: what level of things are recorded in the project log, what level of things need to be signed by both project managers, and what level of things need to be signed by both leaders. The more thoughtful you think in advance, the more active you will be in your future work.

9. Well, we have done a lot of preliminary work and defined some rules of the game. Now it's time to sit down and make a plan. In this section, any book about project management will be better than mine, so I will write less and talk about my own experience. The first is to find several key team members, such as customer business experts and system analysts. , do the project module division work. The project is divided into several blocks, what each block completes, how to exchange information between modules, and so on. Requirements define what to do, but here we are talking about how to do it. It should be emphasized here that there are many ways to achieve a goal. You should choose the one you are most familiar with, not the one that looks perfect. This idea will reduce many risks in your project. Sometimes, customers will be moved by a new technology and insist that you adopt it. You should tell him that if you choose me to do this project, you should allow me to do things in the way I like. The new technology is attractive because not many people suffer. I don't want you to be the first victim. Using the plan will make your work clearer. For example, using Microsoft's project software, you can know how many things need to be done in this project, what resources are needed for each thing, what is the relationship between them, how long it will take, and what are the signs after completion. All the results are finally displayed in a form called Gantt Chart. When you finish this form, you will be surprised to find that the end time of the project on the Gantt chart will be far behind your planned end time (the person signing the contract will never ask your opinion first). Of course, people who have studied project management will talk a lot about WBS and optimization paths, but my experience is that you can't arrange these things until the end of the planning time. If you don't encounter this problem, before I congratulate you on choosing an easy job, please make sure that you have listed all the things to do and correctly evaluated the time they need. At this time, you should consider sacrificing some task time (which also means quality). According to what standard? The strategy of this project! The strategy we mentioned in the third section. My experience is that if you rush everything, you may end up not doing ten things well. Think about what a failure. Therefore, if you put your resources into something you are familiar with and sure of, the final result will be ten things, three of which have been made into excellent products, three have been completed and four have been postponed for some reason. Is the report card much better? Strategy determines priority, and correctly arranging priority is the main embodiment of a project manager's ability.

Well, now the project has completed the preliminary work, understood the project objectives, defined the resources at hand, formulated the project strategy, and then compiled the overall plan of the project, and the project entered the implementation stage. Entering this stage is the time when the project manager is relatively free. Unlike the previous period, the project manager should contact different people everywhere like a reporter, understand what they are saying, and try to guess what they are thinking and what their real purpose is. That's the most tiring thing. Of course, the project manager of a small project is often a resource and has to do a lot of things. At this time, he suffered more than anyone else. During this period, the main job of the project manager is to keep in touch with the customer leaders and their own leaders. Pay special attention when communicating with customer leaders. Unless you need the support of the other party, you need to be specific. Otherwise, tell him everything is fine and have a positive attitude. Never say details that leaders don't understand, such as: "Director Wang, the project is progressing normally recently, but the JVM often leaks some memory ..." Director Wang: "(*&; $@@"。 We should also pay attention to this problem when reporting to our own leaders. Unless he is a technical expert, you need his technical experience, and you can generally report whether the progress is normal and your countermeasures and plans when problems arise. Some places that need his support, such as resource invocation, need to be explained in detail.

Meeting with team members, in addition to some project progress tracking meetings, there are many seminars, which need to brainstorm and solve problems. Many participants are technicians, who are characterized by attention to details, lack of overall situation, a little negative and pessimistic, and strong self-esteem (if the summary is incorrect, you are welcome to pat the brick). Therefore, as a meeting host, as long as you are responsible for asking questions and recording their opinions, you should never be a judge. A problem has many aspects. From different angles, the phenomenon is completely different. Think about the story of a blind man touching an elephant. These technicians who are often proficient in a certain field express their opinions from their own point of view. Unless there are some very special circumstances, you should think that their proposal is the most reasonable from their point of view. Your strength is to grasp the priorities of things, evaluate the priorities of all parties, and come up with a suitable (incorrect) plan according to their opinions. So at the meeting, you should fully respect everyone and his opinions, praise those who put forward better opinions, and never bring the meeting into endless arguments (you should let everyone know that things are not black and white, but diverse, alas, our education has caused trouble ...). After the meeting, you write your own documents and make decisions. Everyone's face was taken care of at the meeting, so there would be no resistance to implementation. If you still have a complaint, you can talk to him in private. If you still can't convince him, let him know, because you are in charge of this project and you take risks, so it's up to you to judge this priority. The top management of an organization is not necessarily higher than ordinary members, but he has to bear the risks of the organization and the asymmetry of information, so his judgment of priorities is definitely better than that of subordinates.

In the process of development, internal management should always emphasize the idea of accepting purpose. The final deliverables of each task must be checked. For example, the interface requires elegance, simplicity and liveliness, and I don't know how to check this requirement. So when assigning tasks to the development team, we should consider how to check the results. For example, I saw a plan in which a task developer was familiar with EJB programming. In this task, in addition to letting these people take some professional certification exams, the results will be difficult to check. Therefore, it is always important for project managers to consider how to check the results and how to deliver them to customers. I heard that some old project managers got the inverted plan, that is, first look at how to check and accept the standards, and then decide the work plan. Many projects have been started for a long time, and I don't know how to check and accept them, so there is a great possibility of problems in this project. Do the project for acceptance. Our role is not a research institution. Our aim is to get results after paying so much labor. In addition, I interject: I strongly disapprove of going to the customer's site development. In particular, a large group of technicians communicate directly with customers, which is easy to cause conflicts and contradictions (determined by the nature of technicians). My practice is that the project manager and the project implementer go to the site, and the software developer is still working on the project in the company. The project implementer is a junior project manager. They know their products and some customers' businesses. The key is that they have good communication skills, commonly known as "thick-skinned". They are the bridge between customers and R&D personnel, and their career direction is also very flexible. They can turn to many directions in the future, which is much wider than the scope of developers.

Then, let's talk about the most troublesome problem of demand change. Changes are usually divided into two types: one is to partially change the original goal, that is, demand changes; The other is that the goal has not changed, but the customer is not satisfied with the current implementation method, from the realization of the process to the layout of the interface. It is inevitable to encounter this situation, mainly because of insufficient communication in advance. As the project progresses, customers gradually think clearly about the problem and change their previous ideas. At this point, if you need to change, and your policy allows it, then pay attention to the following points:

1. Make sure that the previous document is a document recording the previous conclusion and whether the customer has signed it. If not, stop what you are doing, confirm your plan with the customer quickly, and then let him sign it to avoid talking without evidence in the future;

2. Sit down with the customer and discuss in person what is the fundamental purpose of his modification. Is there an alternative that can achieve the same goal but is cheaper for you?

3. (Initial work of the project) Define the change process, which is generally signed by a person designated by the customer (otherwise, every leader of the customer has the right to put in a thick stick, and you will be scrapped), and then submit it to you in the form of formal project documents. Then you make an evaluation analysis to analyze the impact on the cost and progress. After your leader agrees, you will issue corresponding opinions, mainly explaining the reasons for changing the design, pointing out the uncertain consequences (this thing must be written first) and then let the customer sign it. Before the hospital operated on the patient, did you see the exemption clause signed by the family? Yes, as long as you learn this, let everyone realize that any change has a cost and a price.

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