r/projectmanagers

I'm currently working as a Project Coordinator about 3 months now for a Cabinetry manufacturing company that provides project management. It started off fairly slow as they taught me my tasks which involve:

Writing and sending off Work Orders to different trades, creating Gantt Charts for each project and ensuring all the trades have been booked in accordance to the dates, scheduling the staff/trades and ensuring they are not double-booked/overworked, sending off documents to be signed, procurement of items/appliances/stock, receiving items & inventory mangement, updating the master schedule for the manufacturing based on the Gantt Charts I made.

Of course there are other things I do on the side as well such a liasing with clients, trades & suppliers, ensuring the little things don't get to the PM if I can deal with it myself such as client complaints and logistics management, finding lost items and such.

For a time I reviewed the plans drafted by the draughtsman but had told them I cannot do this on top of my other tasks as the drafter needs serious training and I end up taking over his CAD file and taking 4-6 hours to fix the mistakes. I'm a licensed Architect in my country, which doesn't mean shit in the country I am now.

I only work 4 days a week as I have Uni classes on Fridays. I still contact and liaise with clients, trades and suppliers during class hours as the jobs continue on and things need damage control. And as majority of communication goes through me and the project management email that I manage, I couldn't not leave it alone.

Essentialy what I am asking is... how do PMs and other PCs deal with the stress, I feel incredibly overwhelmed most weeks and place too much blame on myself, even for things that aren't my fault due to other people not doing their part correctly.

I have asked another manager how he deals with the stress from the job and he says this situation in the company has never been this bad before and even he is feeling the stress and can't turn off after work hours. A lot of things have gone awry, majority of which is from our subcontractors, and fixing it has meant we are struggling to catch up with our own work. Majority of my work for the past couple of weeks has been damage control.

I told my partner I don't know if I can continue with this amount of stress. I have made sure my work is done, on time, and try to alleviate the stress from the PMs as they're facing worse issues at the moment. They've assured me many times I'm doing a great job, given I'm still in my 3 month probation and is technically still training for the role.

I don't want to give this job up, but it has been overwhelming and I can feel my mental health taking the brunt of it.

I run a small digital agency, about 8 people, and project profitability is a mess. We keep underbidding because we have no real data on how long things take, and every month I look at the numbers and realize we are losing money on jobs we thought were profitable.

Common advice is to track time better, but every time I bring it up my team rolls their eyes. I do not blame them. Most time tracking tools feel like surveillance software and nobody wants to feel monitored all day.

We tried spreadsheets. Disaster. People forgot to fill them in. Tried a tool that took screenshots. My team hated it so much they started working slower just to spite me. Scrapped that quickly.

What I need is accurate data on where our time goes without making my team feel watched. I also need it to integrate with billing because I am tired of chasing invoices and manually calculating hours.

If you run an agency, what do you use and how do you get your team to actually use it without complaining. Do you track religiously or just estimate and hope for the best.

Project manager

Every PM I know has some habit or system they invented themselves because the standard toolkit didn't cover it.

Mine is that I built a process for how people submitted content for the steering committee deck. If they didn't follow it, it didn't go in. Sounds rigid, but with information coming at me from five or six different channels there was no other way to know I'd caught everybody.

Nobody taught me that. I just got burned enough times.

What's yours?

Guys honestly, I personally feel the whole PMP thing is somewhat overrated.

Not saying the framework is useless — but how many workplaces can actually execute all these PMP principles properly in the real world? Can anyone confidently guarantee that?

Managing a project in Europe, America and Asia can be completely different.

In many Asian workplaces, hierarchy is a huge factor. Sometimes what the boss says effectively overrides whatever beautiful stakeholder-management framework you learnt. Then try managing a multinational project team — different attitudes towards hierarchy, deadlines, working hours, gender, communication, holidays and decision-making.

I've worked with teams where certain people disappear for tea breaks at 3pm, environments where a female PM may have a much harder time getting some workers to take instructions from her, and projects where you have to plan around a large number of different religious/public holidays.

These are REAL project-management problems.

PMP can teach you stakeholder engagement, risk management, communication plans, conflict resolution, etc.

But a textbook saying *"manage stakeholder engagement"* and actually getting 15 people from completely different working cultures to cooperate are two very different things 😂

So I sometimes wonder: **is PMP really proof that someone is a good Project Manager, or mainly proof that they understand PMI's framework and passed the exam?**

Curious to hear from PMs who have actually managed multinational teams across different countries.

perhaps can introduce simply, eg:

Current Role / YOE / Country or Region / Industry / PMP Status:
Example: **Senior Project Manager / 15 YOE / India / IT / PMP Certified**

Thanks Much!

I’ve been thinking about the role of project managers in AI projects.

A PM obviously doesn’t need to become a data scientist or machine learning engineer, but they still need enough understanding to communicate with technical teams and make informed decisions.

Where do you think the line should be?

How technical should a project manager become when managing an AI project?

Would love to hear perspectives from PMs and people working directly with AI teams.

For someone trying to build a project management career, I'm curious about the balance between certification and practical experience. Does PMP certification make a significant difference, or is hands-on project experience more valuable?

I'm currently a producer in advertising looking to make the switch into a tech project manager role(also open to other industries), happy to put the time / money in to set myself up best, even if it's doing both. Please let me know your thoughts / if you have any other advice.

I’ve been exploring the intersection of project management and AI, and I’m curious how people are actually using it in real projects.

Are you using AI for things like risk identification, meeting summaries, resource planning, stakeholder communication, or project documentation?

I’m especially interested in practical use cases rather than generic “AI will transform project management” discussions. What has actually saved you time?

For context, I am a Program Coordinator. I got this new job in the Design department of a company. Our team frequently works on projects for all the other departments so I frequently bounce between a lot of different items.

I also manage two subdivisions of my department (Product and Brand) which amounts to around 13 or so people.

I typically manage our sprints, reviews, assist with tasks, spearhead my own efforts, run items through legal review, send out NDAs, contact stakeholders, create company templates, organize meetings/workshops, restructure company assets for accessibility, meet with vendors and purchase needed items, coordinate with other departments, and the list goes on.

But now, I’m being asked to be a Project Manager for a major product effort despite me not being a project manager nor in that domain. My job title specifically highlights being a ‘Creative’ role.

I am already spread thin and the Project Managers from other departments treat me like that’s my only project and are very harsh when I’m not 100% on top of it constantly (given that they don’t have other obligations to other departments like I do)

I talked to a few people, namely family and friends, and they explained that I should suck it up and that “everyone has multiple projects” but I feel like I’m being asked to go far beyond my job description and that because of my unique position, I am basically a project manager for each department that works with ours.

Am I in the wrong? I feel so spread thin right now and this new effort has me at my bursting point.

AI can help project managers with documentation, analysis, planning, and communication, but I’m wondering where people draw the line. Would you let AI generate a first draft of a project plan? Analyze project risks? Summarize stakeholder meetings? What types of decisions should always remain human-led?

hey guys, i have started my first ever proper game project with a small team and as this is my first time in a project lead position i was looking for some advice on how best to manage a group of different disciplines.

I am a game artist so am a lot more familiar with the artist pipeline, but my team also consists of programmers and a sound tech. Currently I am using a burndown chart and a macro chart to help delegate tasks and scope, but I am still finding myself a bit lost on how to manage the team and give everybody the details they need.

This week I am looking to meet with each discipline seperately, to get an idea of their pipelines, but if anyone has advice or has other management strategies I should look into I would love to hear it!!

We are making a 2D indie detective story/mystery game in Unity so I would also love reccomendations of other detective games I should check out in my market research.

Thanks everybody!

I run a small digital agency, about 8 people, and project profitability is a mess. We keep underbidding because we have no real data on how long things take, and every month I look at the numbers and realize we are losing money on jobs we thought were profitable.

Common advice is to track time better, but every time I bring it up my team rolls their eyes. I do not blame them. Most time tracking tools feel like surveillance software and nobody wants to feel monitored all day.

We tried spreadsheets. People forgot to fill them in. Tried a tool that took screenshots. My team hated it so much they started working slower just to spite me. Scrapped that quickly.

What I need is accurate data on where our time goes without making my team feel watched. I also need it to integrate with billing because I am tired of chasing invoices and manually calculating hours.

If you run an agency, what do you use and how do you get your team to actually use it without complaining. Do you track religiously or just estimate and hope for the best.

I'm a project manager with a few years of experience, and lately it feels like AI is becoming an important skill for PMs. I don't want a technical course with coding or machine learning though. 

So are there any good AI courses specifically for project managers? 

I've always found it interesting that a project can have a detailed schedule, clear deliverables, and a good team and still go off track.
Sometimes the problem isn't the plan itself.
It could be changing requirements, poor communication, unrealistic expectations, lack of stakeholder involvement, or risks that weren't identified early enough.
What's the biggest reason you've personally seen a project fail or seriously struggle?

Requirement changes are probably unavoidable in many projects, but they can become a serious problem when every change is treated as urgent.
How do experienced project managers handle stakeholders who continuously change requirements without damaging the relationship?
Do you rely mainly on change control, prioritization, impact analysis, or communication?