The funny thing with this is that I think a number of the people I work directly with would use this service… for HOURS!!!

New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone To Talk At About Mac Products

Thanks to The Onion!

When I used to ask my friends what they did for a living I often laughed when they said that they were involved in project management.  “What do you do?” I’d say… “I’m a project manager for an insurance company where I manage…”.

I had a hard time figuring out what it was they actually did. I mean in schools I was used to starting a project, being involved with it on the ground and working it through with the people. But now, as we are trying to more and more at our school I find that I am actually understanding what it means to be a project manager as I have less and less time to be as hands-on as I once was.

I recently saw a cartoon from ProjectCartoon.com that really put things into perspective for me and gave me a good understanding of what all of this meant.

The series of cartoons outline the step taken in managing a project and what everyone hears throughout the process… it’s like the old telephone game you used to play as a kid where you said one thing to some and they said it to the next person and you see how the message changed by the time it reaches the end.

The ideas, the thoughts and most importantly the EXPECTATIONS change by the time you reach the end.

It’s this point… that of managing the expectations that I think is so key and why my friends have the jobs that they do.

As you move from step-to-step and have all of the conversations and meetings that go along with any project it’s important to keep expectations inline and realistic. As I have found with two major projects I am working on this can be the most difficult part.

What is said or mentioned in passing or during a casual conversation can turn into a deliverable and when the developer(s) or project engineers aren’t aware of that there can be problems.  What is the “best” part about this is that no one is really at fault.  Much like in the telephone game, each person believes that they heard and/or said the right thing, so how could they be wrong?

This is where I go back to the thing you get in trouble for in school so often… passing notes. If you write things down, whether that be in a functional specification or in something in an email… GET IT WRITTEN DOWN.  This will be you best course of action if you have any questions or problem.  It won’t get the job done any sooner, but it will give you something to turn to down the line.

So… what’s my point with all of this… why have I taken the time to write this?  Well… this post was for me mostly. I just wanted to get this out. It has been a long time since I have written anything of substance on the site and felt like I need to do this as much for me as anyone out there that might read it.  In the end, I find that my job is not so much what it once was and as the level of complexity and detail to the things that we are doing as a school grows I find that I am less and less hands-on and more and more becoming a project manager… the job I used to laugh about is now a big part of mine.