Project Management

Someone ought to write a book called "I'm a project manager, Now What?!"

Hey, not a bad idea for a book.

Back in 2003 I began the gradual transition from video editor/shooter to project manager. Mind you I do plenty of editing, but depending upon the project I am in fact managing, sometimes more sometimes less. But the particular responsibilities are no less important than the others.

At the time, we had about 3 times as many employees, so I was also a department manager. There was some resentment, such as "can you do my job as the web master? how can you possibly manage me or review my performance if you can't do my job yourself?"

I'm not making this up, but the same guy who said that, in the same conversation, said "you know, I turned down other jobs since I've been working here for more money because I thought I could make that money here, and I like the people I work with. Now you're telling me you're not happy with my performance? How could you judge my performance, you don't know what I do...yadda yadda yadda."

As it turns out, in addition to learning how to evaluate the performance of others, I also had to learn how to fire people, see the previous paragraph. Not an easy thing to do as I learned 6 times.

Given a leaner crew, I could focus less on personnel issues and more on figuring out how to juggle multiple projects and manage a few others, and delegate work to everyone, including to myself.

I have blogged previously about making lists and using the right tools to keep track of a project's process, milestones and deliverables. My favorite tool is a great new application - a calendar! Another tool I use a lot is the yellow sticky note pad - brilliant!

We tried using MS Project and various other free and non-free pieces of software, but in a small organization you can easily devote hours per week just managing the tools you are trying to use to manage your work. Alas, every organization is different and has different needs.

What has worked the best is relative autonomy. Give someone a task and a deadline, and they generally only seek help when absolutely necessary. Everyone, however, has interruptions - many of which are unavoidable - and these lead to missed deadlines. We can all improve in that department.

Project management, thus, includes a heavy dose of time management. Time management is an acquired skill and perhaps the most difficult one to master.

Given my preponderance for having 10 or more projects on my plate at any given time, we have agreed that I will stop working on some of the longer form video editing projects, only because I cannot focus on one thing for more than a day or so without a week long interruption. Thus, video editing taks I WILL continue to work on are those with either tight deadlines, projects I shoot solo, all corporate work, new projects and brief editing tasks which are 5,10,15,30,60 minute chunks of time within one of my 12,18 or 24 month long projects. In other words, a little of everything other than spending weeks working continuously on one project and one project only.

In summary, project management can take many forms. Personnel management, time management, even equipment management all play a role in moving forward toward deadlines. Some deadlines are a day or two, a week or two, a month or two or years in the making. Something useful yet cumbersome about breaking up a project into tasks, either in MS Project or on paper, is that you can fail to see the big picture - or you are so focused on only the major milestones, that you feel like you are not accomplishing anything, while in fact you are working on a 3 month deadline, which is itself made up of perhaps 50 smaller tasks. But these 50 smaller tasks are not and should not be part of a big picture view of anything. This is the beauty of delegation - you can avoid micromanagement as long as you have a capable person working towards the goal - it is assumed the resource will hit each smaller task.

The challenge is when you are the manager and the resource. Time management indeed!

Thanks for slogging through this one!

Mike Cohen