Technical Skills For Project Manager | Skills Required to Become Project Manager
Technical Skills For Project Manager
I am so excited to talk about this topic this is exactly what I do for a living I'm a project manager I'm not really a project manager I mean I'm I started as a project manager now I'm a software team manager and a scrum master and an agile there's a lot of things I do at my work we will get to my whole journey but for now let's stick to "how to get into a management role or really get into a project management role without any experience."
But before we start I want to know so comment below if you are in one of this category you happen to join an engineering field because your parents told you or forced you to take the case you did not score any grades in 12th or diploma and ended up much like because you had no choice and you had to go into that field or three you chose it because you thought that you liked this field and then when you started doing it, you realize it you don't like that I am in one of those categories and I want to know if you are also in one of those categories and if you are then it will make me feel better and might also make you feel better than I'm also in one of those categories.
Okay, so what we are going to do is this is a super big topic to cover so I'm going to break this into smaller chunks and each of this will lead up to the next article. So you have to read the entire series if you read the second part and not the first part it will not make sense.
So the first part which is this one we are going to talk about what exactly does a project manager does? What is the skill sets required to be a project manager and start at an end of a project cycle and then what skill set you have to have or you need to develop. And then the second article will talk about my journey, how I went from no project management experience from core computer science to getting a full-time project management job.
For management position before I graduated so talk about that as well and then in the final article of this series, we will talk about me not even fine light I don't know what we will come up with but in that next part we will next to next part we will talk about what are the interviews how does the interview look like how do you apply for to this kind of job position so this is super fun I am so excited about this and maybe I will also bring a recruiter to talk about how they look at project management application and all of that so stay tuned
What does Project Manager do?
The first thing we need to do is get an example of a project and I have a very good example. When you were a kid did you ever organize a birthday party? It's very common. I mean I'm pretty sure you did. If you did not do, you ever organize a college event or like a building, an event organized festival of Navratri or Diwali anything, did you organize like an event in your life and if you did, then this example will make sense to you.
Okay so let's start with a birthday party, let's say your best friend's parents told you that can you organize the birthday party for my kid. So technically your best friend's parents are your client in the software world. So you are the organizer of a birthday party, but in our world, you're the project manager correct.
Okay, so you are super excited. You start asking the question to parents that, "What do you want on the menu? Where is that going to be in the home? Where is it going to be? A separate venue? Do you want a DJ?"
How many people we will start asking so many questions to them which is what we call it in our project management is requirement gathering requirement analysis. Basically what you are doing is getting the requirements of the client, so that makes sense you know getting requirements from what's the scope of this project. Once you understand the whole scope of the party, they tell you that okay we want the party outside, we don't want it in the home there's going to be 50 guests, they'll definitely want DJ and use the budget of the project.
So you understood, you understand the scope of the project. Once you understand the scope you go into planning mode where you start delegating work. You have your own team, you kind of start telling here you are the organizer of DJ, you are responsible for food, you are responsible for the venue, you are responsible for catalyst, and you kind of manage all of them.
So that's what the project manager does. They delegate work and they kind of oversee everything, they are responsible for coordinating what is making sure everyone does their own thing. So similarly in our corporate world, our software world will also, you will also get a team and you will have designer, developer tester, Brod, etc. stakeholders and all of them. Then you start planning for the timeline, by this the date you should order food, by this time you should have your DJ fixed, by this time you also manage the budget.
You have to make sure that you don't go over budget because you're not going to put outside or pocket you have. If they told you the part is going to cost you five thousand rupees, so you have to make sure everything gets done in five thousand. Then you plan for Plan B which is your backup plan, if things go wrong then this is what you're going to do.
In the project management world, it's called a risk mitigation plan basically this is a risk like if DJ doesn't show up then what are you going to do? You probably will create a playlist of music, download the songs, and have a Bluetooth speaker, so they can play from that speaker or you invited 50 people and there might be 75 people at the party because somebody got their parents somebody got their friends. So that might happen so you just have to make sure that there's enough food for all of them, so you tell your restaurants ahead of time that there might be the possibility that you might get more guests and that kind of planning we would call it plan D or backup plan. In project management, we call it a risk mitigation plan.
It's very important you have to have a risk mitigation plan similarly in our corporate world you get a timeline you get money you get resources all of that so the planning is done you go into an execution board and basically execution mode is where your team members or you kind of start executing things which you plan where you start calling restaurants you start calling different menu different vendors different detailed food items menu stuff like that you start inviting people so that's kind of an execution and similarly in software world people start working towards the Stauffer software they start testing it so that that's called execution now execution in this the birthday party will also include the actual birthday party the day of birthday party you are making sure that everything is going smooth so you are coordinating like if the food is enough if the guest has everything they need if the DJ volume lights and cake is there on the time and you know things like that so you basically are overviewing or making sure that everyone does what they are supposed to do and as an organizer or project manager you also do something amazing which is called resolving any blockers or showstoppers now what does that mean in a birthday language and then software language let me explain you so Stoppers or blockers are something like victims of this the reason you cannot execute this plan if DJ doesn't show up then there can be no music or the kid doesn't get delivered on time then you can't celebrate the a birthday without key those are showstopper like without these things the word they won't be happening so you are like resolving the block as you are the resolving any showstoppers so in our software world for example if the the website was supposed to go live and something happened to bring then you make sure that at least there should be a login page so without login page people can't log in so that's a a showstopper that's and cannot be launched so that's the things you kind of work you coordinate with your team it's just a very simple language so you kind of coordinate and then you resolve those blockers okay now the party is done you enjoy the party after the party you kind of view and your friends who organized the party you kind of discuss this went well we could have done that that better or we could have done this this way next time we should do this we next time you should not order from that the food they should order a cake from some so you kind of discussed the pros and cons like what went well what did not go well and you kind of have that list in your head in project management that's called retrospective or lessons learned so you kind of meet the list and make sure when you get next birthday party assign you don't make those mistakes or if someone calls you and it's like hey I'm trying to organize a birthday party then those are the things you tell them that do not go to that DJ or do not go to that person for the cake whatever so that's basically a start to end like you know you care the requirement plan execute retrospective obviously there are more steps but that's basically what the project management is and that is typically a waterfall model there are many companies in United States still follow waterfall model I started when I started in my company we were reused to do wonderful and how we moved completely from waterfall to agile which is rapid development iteration scrum there are many names and we will get into those details later on but overall in general this is what project manager do there are three-four main skills the first one is an organization like super organized and a big vision basically you have to organize every single thing and make sure things go well you plan for every the single thing you are super detail-oriented and you have a big vision to know who's working on what what can this impact that person and that person to this impact to so that is the number one skill to you are a people person, you understand people are super important to you as a project manager, you cannot give someone who is super shy to invite guests to thank you that's that doesn't work right so that's kind of you understanding people and their strengths then you are super good at communication and coordination skill if things don't get translated if there's a problem in communication if two people are not talking in your team you make sure you resolve that you coordinate activities if someone is not able to get through that so you don't you let your team focus on that and you go and coordinate with the other people to make sure they get what they need that and then the final thing is you are super well-organized with the process you have to understand what process the the company follows and you follow that process and the most important skill is to get work done like basically, you have to make sure work gets done by your team so if the project fails then it's because of you and this is a big Pro ed wise to you if you're a project manager I want to become a project manager don't ever blame your team for the failure of a project it's usually you who did not manage well don't start blaming that because of that the person you know things didn't go well I planned it well but that person did not do it well so don't really do that because your team will lose faith in you so instead just you know take the blame accept the failure and accept the mistakes and then you know to improve in the next project so that's my biggest advice and obviously if you win the project or if the project is successful give super credits to your team full credit to your team that because of their work the project was able to be successful-ok so now the big question is that do I need to know technical skills technical knowledge no you don't really need to understand technology technical skills if you do know them that's very good it's a big advantage that's what happened with me I knew technology so it added to my advantage but if you don't know then it's totally fine you don't have to know all the technical details of it you have to understand the process you have to understand people and then how to make sure the work gets done and communication skills are the things you need to work on I'm going to stop here I wanted to give you the context of a project manager role skills duties but again remember there are many different types of project manager there is a technical project manager IT project coordinator IT project manager general project manager scrum master agile project manager, so we'll get to all of this later but for now, overall you understood the skill set so go back and do some introspection ask yourself do you have any of this skill set or at At least do you enjoy doing planning scheduling and coordinating communicating any of this team building all of this so you need to have this skill set to be a project manager to get into a management position because that's what you will do you will spend endless time in meetings and understanding the requirements and coordinating their efforts making sure your team gets all the answers they want making sure they get the work that reporting back to the manager so this lot of coordination.
So do you really enjoy all of this and if you do then the next article is going to be awesome because in the next article I'll talk about how I went from computer science core programming computer science student to a project manager with no project management experience and how I developed all my profile and skill set to get four job offers before I graduated I like to post that but anyway come back in the next article and we'll talk more in detail and obviously we'll talk so much more in detail about all the different roles also until our next one.
Keep smiling and keep hustling.