Category Archives: Project Management

What Product Manager can bring to the table?

In every organization, there is a role that requires balancing many tasks and handling high expectations. Product Manager is set for such jobs, one that often goes unrecognized. PMs work behind the scenes to bring teams together, guide projects through challenges, and ensure ideas turn into outcomes. Yet, their efforts are rarely acknowledged in a direct way.

When projects succeed, the spotlight tends to shine on those in more visible roles, like designers or engineers. The person who made sure everything stayed on track is often overlooked. This makes product management a unique role where success is measured by how well things work, rather than by what can be easily seen or quantified.

A product managerโ€™s job is even harder because it involves leading without direct authority. Product Manager motivate teams that may have different priorities, turning broad goals into plans that everyone can follow. They keep things moving despite shifting demands and daily hurdles.

Despite these efforts, many PMs feel they could be doing more. This sense often comes from the nature of their work, which doesnโ€™t produce visible outputs like a finished design or a line of code. Instead, their achievements are found in smoother processes and clearer direction, things that are harder to highlight or explain.

The truth is, product managers play a key part in keeping things running. They connect ideas, people, and plans in a way that keeps progress steady. But if they donโ€™t share their contributions, nobody else will. Without their efforts, even the best ideas might struggle to succeed.

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Agile Methodology: Points, velocity, Complexity, & effort estimation

In Agile Methodology, points and velocity have been seen as crucial elements for the success of many teams and projects. A few years back one of my teams was working on a new mobile application for a popular restaurant chain. The project was a complex one, as it required integration with the restaurant’s existing systems, as well as the ability to place orders and make payments through the app. As the team began to work on the project, they quickly realized that estimating the complexity and effort required to complete the various tasks and stories was becoming increasingly difficult. The team was struggling to come up with accurate estimates, and as a result, they were falling behind schedule.

In an effort to get back on track, I decided to understand along with the project manager assigned to the team on how exactly they are estimating stories. And to my surprise I learned that the version of points and velocity understanding is way to confusing for them. We began by assigning points to each task and story based on their relative complexity and effort required, then used velocity to estimate the number of points the team believed they could handle in a given sprint. Trust me, it might sound simple but it was nothing near to simple. In this article I will try to break some of the learnings that helped my team to understand things well.

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A note for transitioning from traditional to agile project management

Adopting agile project management? Learn how to excel by aligning team goals, re-evaluating success metrics & fostering collaboration. Say goodbye to traditional constraints and embrace agility for faster results. As a project manager, the transition to agile methodologies can bring about new challenges. Agile emphasizes small teams working in short intervals and continuously learning, which may be a departure from the traditional linear approach to project management that many project managers are accustomed to. However, with the right mindset and approach, project managers can not only adapt but excel in this new environment.

One of the initial steps for project managers leading an agile team is to comprehend the goals and objectives of the organization. By taking the time to understand the reasoning behind the organization’s adoption of agile, project managers can align their team’s goals and objectives with those of the organization. This allows them to demonstrate how organizational agility can aid their team in achieving these goals, and how their team can contribute to the overall success of the organization.

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The dilemma of an entrepreneur acting as a project manager

An entrepreneur who has to also act as a project manager, the days are always filled with a constant act of balancing. In startups and budding businesses, you have to perform those roles side by side. On one hand, you had to lead and manage your teams ensuring that projects are completed on time and within budget, on other hand, you have to focus on growing your business and making sure that it is financially successful as well.

One of the primary challenges I have always heard from people in this dual role is time management, as frankly for an entrepreneur, there are a million things to do and always not enough hours in a day to do them. You have to constantly prioritize and make sure that you are focused on the most important tasks at hand and do not deviate from insignificant activities. Of course, some days such decisions are done right, and sometimes they are not.

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