r/projectmanagement

Something from my last discussion here stuck with me.

A few experienced PMs pushed back on the idea of automating milestone acceptance. Their argument was that obtaining approval, verifying deliverables, and protecting the project commercially are fundamental PM responsibilities.

I agree, and I think I framed the problem too broadly.

But I'm curious about what happens after that judgment has been made.

Say a client formally accepts a milestone on Tuesday.

The deliverables have been reviewed, any exceptions documented, and the necessary approval obtained.

Now the acceptance needs to be reflected in the project records, supporting evidence attached, finance notified, and the appropriate invoicing or delivery handoff initiated.

Depending on the organization, those steps might happen automatically, through a defined workflow, or through several emails and someone following up.

None of that necessarily requires another acceptance decision.

What interests me is whether anyone actually measures the time and effort between a formal project decision and its downstream completion.

For those managing multiple client engagements, what tends to cause the most friction after acceptance has already been obtained?

Missing documentation? Unclear ownership? Finance queues? Or does the process generally work without much intervention?

I'm trying to understand where the administrative work actually accumulates, rather than assuming every manual step is a problem.

I know I am just a project manager with no technical knowledge. How do I go about making sure what will be “in scope” and “not in scope”. This will my first PM role doing this. Do I bring in the technical people to give me the scope and stuff.

My ultimate goal is working towards creating a scope document. Thanks in advance for any help or guidance as we don’t have a PMO.

A month ago, I embarked on a journey to learn Project Management, and I've come to realize that merely securing a highly-rated and well-compensated position isn't sufficient. My ambition is to integrate a technical skill into this path. Consequently, I've resolved to delve into Data Analysis and fuse these two disciplines: PM + Data Analysis. I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this amalgamation and whether it will broaden my professional prospects.

I just started a new job on Monday as a Project Manager for an Ad Agency. They have a university as a client and I was warned the client was crazy.

Now. I inherited the project 3 months in. Idk what was promised. I just have mostly the start dates of each "course" and I know we need organic and paid social media posts and videos.

But I was never onboarded or trained. My boss won't respond to my questions or requests. The old PM was a mess and the files are a mess.

New projects and requests keep piling in. Meanwhile, I still don't know the process, goals, or priorities. They basically just said "here, feed the AI transcription of our calls about this project into AI, and have AI train you."

Am I doomed? Do I jump ship or is it salvageable? The red flags also include: they're hiring me as a contractor instead of an employee to save money, but the pay is ok and the job market is shit. Also the job is flexible hybrid and in a co-working space, but I showed up today and no one (not even the boss was there). (It was just the boss and his partner there on Monday and Tuesday, the rest of the employees work remotely).

I know the last PM quit. I really wanted to have a good job and try to make it work. How long do I give myself the chance to figure things out and how long do I stick things out to see if I'll make it?

I wish I was starting a project from zero... Not inheriting a mess.

Hi Everyone.

I’m starting a new project management role in construction specifically in the commissioning. I don’t have PMP nor other certifications. I have run small projects myself that are $20k but nothing larger at a large scale. I was wondering if folks here can guide me on what I should look into and wanted to learn from folks that have been in the industry for awhile. Any suggestions would be helpful to be a good PM. (Ex. Doing meeting minutes with attendees with action items, etc)

I’m going to do my PMP but that would be a year from now. Just need some information now so I can be successful in my new job.

I work in field sales and execution. I'm increasingly of the opinion we have a glaring need for better task management. I'm part of a 7 person team (technically comprised of two sub teams) that typically juggles between 5-10 different "objectives", at a time. In addition, we regularly get pivoted with "Fire Drills". Then there are events that get thrown in the mix too. Sometimes, it feels like we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Don't get me wrong. Things get accomplished. But not without enduring levels of stress that could be avoided with better planning and communication. We still hit our goals. But I wonder how much more successful we could be if our workflows were both more comprehensive and more efficient. Tracking progress mid-objective and follow up tasks, in particular, are always sore spots. It's not uncommon for in-progress tasks to be in a status where we are "waiting" for outside parties to complete their side of things. These are areas where I feel like things fall through the cracks more than we may want to admit. 

I really want to get my team on board with utilizing a PM tool. I'm fairly literate with most common coding languages. So, I'm comfortable with taking on any involved set-up and integration processes. But the more intuitive and easy the user side of things are, the more likely they are to actually adopt it. i'm trying to decide the best platform for our needs. I think getting our company to eventually foot the bill is very possible -- if we can show proof of concept. Until then I am looking for applications with free tiers. We also tend to do the majority of our work on iPads. So, bonus points for interfaces that function well in a mobile environment. 

We already have enterprise Microsoft accounts. So, Planner is available to us. However, it seems very bare bones? It strikes me as more of a dressed up to do list than a true PM tool. Jira might be overkill for our needs? It's hard for me to tell without committing time and diving in. Trello sounds like it could be a good compromise. I don't understand why it's free tier seems significantly more limited than Jira's though? I'm still doing more research on Nuvro, Asana, ClickUp, Kantata, Workfront, Monday, and Tempo. Any suggestions and feedback anyone has to offer is appreciated.

Hi,

I've been working at a medium sized MSP for the past 4 years. I started as project coordinator and I'm now essentially senior PM.

I've decided to leave for various reasons. I'm underpaid, the lead Delivery manager who was managing the PMO retired and now we report to the COO who knows nothing about project management, and they promoted the laziest and worse PM in the team to lead just because of seniority. All of this happened in the span of 5 months while the company is growing fast and we are busiest as ever.

I can see they are making stupid decisions and will start losing clients but I can't really say anything because I know nothing will change. Already some issues with clients have started arising because of insufficient training of the newer members and lack of oversight and no one bats an eye.

In general I have low self esteem which I'm struggling with but I know I'm doing a great job as a PM. I currently handle most of our onboardings which are pretty complicated as well as a big chunk of our biggest and most complex projects. Senior management is praising me but only with words. In practice, I got no promotion even though I'm operating at a higher level than my position but I keep hearing you and the lead PM are on the same level or it's you and X this and you and X that.

Yet I find myself thinking sometimes if maybe I'm not good at all but in a sea of idiots I'm less of an idiot if that makes sense.

I've made the decision to leave. I know I have to. I'm mentally exchausted from the workload and dealing with idiots. I have nightmares about work and I'm very stressed but on the other hand I'm thinking.. what if I'm really not good and I fail miserably in a new job?

Especially going from an MSP where you deal with a larger number of projects so there is no time to do all the things a PM is supposed to do.

I guess I'm just looking for some opinions.. Especially if you've moved from that type of environment to "regular" projects and what is it like working for companies with a more structured PMO?

My team has ever changing processes, a very fresh consulting team and a large volume of projects and a product team that doesn’t have streamlined or consistent processes.

I am struggling managing my projects and keeping track of action items. My one note is in an absolute dire state and I’m not sure how to get back on track.

For those who manage many projects and have poor processes on your team how do you keep track of action items next steps, hold people accountable? I feel like a broken record at this point but I’m struggling with time management as well.