Is Project Management Your Secret Weapon?
Why Every Engineer and Manager Needs Basic Project Management Skills
Secret weapon, what? I can imagine some of you rolling your eyes at the mention of project management. Well, I did too at one point :)
At the beginning of my career, I thought project management was just a fancy term for unnecessary bureaucracy. But when I first became a team lead and was tasked with building a fund management system from the ground up, my perspective changed. My project was a year behind schedule, and I quickly (well, relatively quickly) learned the value of project management. People often talk about the school of hard knocks, and let me tell you, I graduated from the University of Hard Knocks with that project (the whole story is for another day).
The reality is, we’re all project managers now. Whether you’re an individual contributor or an engineering manager, project management skills can be incredibly beneficial. Here are a few reasons why:
Benefits of Having Project Management Skills
For Engineers:
Get things done: manage your time like a pro so you can actually finish your tasks and projects on time. There’s nothing like the feeling of shipping something impactful to production quickly and reliably (bonus points if you address tech debt in a smart way).
Work smarter: streamline your workflow, keeping your projects organized and on track without the chaos. Who knows, maybe even Marie Kondo would be proud of you.
Boost your career: stand out with a skill set that can lead to promotions and new opportunities. No, seriously, if you’re using these skills to help your team and manager, you’ll put yourself in the limelight, and that’s a good thing.
For Engineering Managers:
Deliver value consistently: meet deadlines and build trust with stakeholders. If you’ve ever lost trust with customers and stakeholders due to missed deadlines, you know how much this sucks. Avoid re-enrolling in the University of Hard Knocks.
Juggle multiple projects and stay organized: keep all your projects aligned with company goals, keep track of all the moving parts and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Plus, your team will thank you for the harmony where everyone knows what they are working on and their role.
Risk management: look around the corner to see what kind of “monsters” are lurking, spot potential problems early, and deal with them before they escalate. Obvious? Maybe. But consistency is key here, especially making sure the whole team applies a risk-up-front approach.
In “97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know,” Camille Fournier, author of “The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change,” talks about a common question she gets: What makes a great engineering manager? While many qualities are important, she says (and I totally agree) that the ability to build highly productive engineering teams is non-negotiable.
And what do highly productive engineering teams do? They deliver, consistently and with focus, understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing and feeling good about their work. Fournier lists several skills necessary to achieve this, and the first is - you guessed it - project management.
Identifying stakeholders, clarifying scope and requirements, breaking work into smaller tasks, sequencing them, identifying the minimum viable product (MVP), keeping stakeholders in the loop, creating launch and release plans, and proactively identifying risks. Yep, all of this is project management.
Spotlight
I’ll be diving deeper into various project management topics in future posts.
In the meantime, if you want to start digging into project management without feeling overwhelmed, I highly recommend checking out “Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager.” It’s a great little book.
Sneak Peek
In the next few posts, I’ll cover essential fundamentals for engineers and managers.
What’s your experience with project management? Share your thoughts, battle scars, and stories in the comments below.
Stay curious,
Ruslan