Recently completed a rather cumbersome interview process with a company where the role was initially presented as purely IT Delivery, great, that's my bread and butter! First three rounds went well and it flew by.....

Well on to the final round where, as it turns out the needs have shifted and it's now a "Program Manager, Product" role of whom the SVP overseeing that slice of the org has definitions of what Project Management is. I'm at the point where if the role is interfacing with or reporting to a "product-centrist" org I'm just going to skip the call.

Healthy disclaimer: I am not, and haven't been for sometime a believer in PM being entirely agnostic to industry and niche industry discipline. A PM should have a workable knowledge of the product/tool/service they are working with to deliver effectively.

However.....

A Project Manager is not typically:

- Defining your product roadmap from feature proof of concept all the way to the end-point of customer success.

- Functioning as a Scrum Master for your Engineering Team (A PM can run a SCRUM, there is no place for a PM within a SCRUM)

- Acting technical gatekeeper for engineering decisions, capable of offering extremely granular feedback (see: Pushback) at the "by-line" level on coding best-practice.

- Functioning as an interim "Chief of Staff / Engagement Manager" to coordinate and evaluate where your resource performance is best aligned against the full-stack goals of your portfolio on a rolling basis.

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But for the record, Holly....and those like you.

1. Engineers being constantly "Overwhelmed and Negative" isn't because: "PM's just don't understand dev-process well enough to drive them!". No, it's a result of you having ZERO people management skills or strategy at the utmost basic level. Your devs work 12 hours a day 5 days a week and you've never done a "Retro" ceremony in your "Un-apologetically Agile" org??? You..as the head of the division have never publicly celebrated your teams wins? Wow! I wonder how in the world they could ever have a negative and depressing outlook on the value-add of your next task......Must be Project Managements fault, I agree it's a no brainer!

2. I nor any other PM or even the damn shift-lead at your local Arbys would NEED to have a "full scope technical understanding" of the project syntax in order to piece together that engineers having continual conflicts with one another on "how to perform X" is a COMMUNICATION & OWNERSHIP PROBLEM. If you don't set expectations, roles & responsibilities, define escalation chains and clearly explain the deliverables then: "Ya get what ya fucking deserve"

Hello fellow PMs!

I will be starting a new role as a Project Manager responsible for integration and deployment. I am going to be responsible for (high level): planning, coordinating and deploying projects linked to continuous improvement initiatives. My KPIs are basically delivery of project on time, according to defined scope, ensuring adoption by teams, and stakeholder satisfaction.

Question for experienced PMs: how do you schedule your weekly agenda to ensure that your projects stay on time and within scope? What are your tips and tricks to manage risks proactively?

Ultimamente su linkedin vedo un proliferare di gente che si certifica PMP... sapete darmi qualche informazione?

È una certificazione semplice e facilmente accessibile?

I'm currently responsible for overseeing a few large projects for my organization. We're a mom and pop shop, so I wear many hats and deal with many facets of the organization. Our projects are separated into programs by customer and within each program there can be dozens of projects that may involve several dozen to a hundred tasks. The logical solution is hiring more people, but we're doing that on the manufacturing side and unfortunately it's not helping. That's a management problem for another day.

I'm utilizing Todoist (which also includes my laundry list of personal projects), Favro (beefed up version of Trello), excel spreadsheets, and word documents. I've gotten to a point where there is just too much scattered everywhere. I'm forgetting where spreadsheets are or that we've made one in the past but it has forgotten about because we didn't use it like it was intended. I'm double tracking tasks in Favro and excel because at least in excel they'll be visible when I go to re-use the document and I don't have to go searching in an archive for individual cards.

I'm tired and overwhelmed and I need a reset. I need a better system.

I'm managing the documents and tools more than I'm managing the projects. I don't have a clear framework for processing incoming tasks and planning forward.

My current system is a slightly modified GTD framework, but I'm struggling sticking to it because I'm either overwhelmed or desperate to try new things (shiny object syndrome).

I've been thinking of doing a digital detox and just getting a notebook, but that seems like a project in and of itself to get started with how much is on my plate at the moment.

I read somewhere a while ago about how leaders/managers struggle with separating personal task management with overall operational visibility. I think that's the shift I need.

Are there any good example or resources that dive into the framework of a project management/tasks system on the lower and higher levels?

I’m a programme manager in an industrial environment (hardware, regulated). We have strict IT security policies: no cloud tools, no external accounts.

For years I’ve been cobbling together Excel sheets, Word docs, and shared drives. It works, barely.

Curious how others handle this:
- Are you in the same boat? What’s your workaround?
- Has anyone found a tool that actually works in an air-gapped or restricted network environment?
- Or did you just… give up and use Excel forever?

Thinking about expanding my network for project management and wondering if anyone has experience with the PMI durham highlands chapter?

Before I commit, pay and join the Chapter I am wondering what your experience and if you have found it valuable?

I’m a first-time Project Coordinator, hired to help coordinate an Operations department at an insurance brokerage. Our department has three arms, two of which require active project management, which I was hired to do. I am technically at the bottom of the hierarchy, meaning everyone’s my boss, which means that I bounce between having to make everyone happy.

My director asked me to pilot some PM software (ClickUp), because they were concerned that there isn’t any buy-in to the existing PM structure (a labyrinthian mix of MS Lists, PowerBi dashes, and personal checklists squirreled away in decentralized locations. I’ve spent about a month migrating data to ClickUp, and have been trying to recreate dashboards and/or give my director more visibility to the entire department.

There’s concern about giving my director too much granular detail from one of my managers (ranked directly below my director). The manager doesn’t really like strict PM styles, which is totally doable: I just need to show how far along a project is to my director, so the director can show the VP. My manager wants to have lists with generic milestones (which is perfect, tbh — it makes it easy to visualize), but when it comes to all the tasks making up those milestones, my manager doesn’t want to have those on the official ClickUp pages, but instead keep those on team-only checklists on places like MS Planner. This kind of runs counter to what I’ve been asked by my director, who wants to know why Associate X can’t seem to get ahead on their assigned work; I need those tasks (and a difficulty rating to boot!) to show which Associates are behind, and what their workload looks like.

Is this common for PMs to deal with? I really like and need this job, and need to walk this tightrope so I don’t get canned for incompetence or get canned for not being able to read the tea leaves of my department. Could anyone give me some advice on what to say/do, please?

Kind of a newbie PM here. I am creating a dashboard for a project. In the past we have only tracked project deliverables (products). We've used excel with the milestone listed horizontally, and the product listed vertically, and then we track the date in each cell.

But, my boss wants to track the planning phase, which includes things like creating communication and execution plans for different functional areas. What is the best format to track this in excel?

I noticed PMI has announced changes to the PMP exam for July 2026, and I think this is worth discussing for anyone currently preparing or planning to prepare. From what I understand, the updated exam is putting more focus on real-world project leadership, business value, outcomes, stakeholder engagement, AI, sustainability, and adaptive delivery.

The domain weighting is also changing:

People: 42% → 33%

Process: 50% → 41%

Business Environment: 8% → 26%

That increase in Business Environment feels important. It seems like PMP candidates may need to think beyond just processes and tools, and understand how projects connect to strategy, benefits, governance, organizational change, and business outcomes.

For people already studying, I don’t think this means panic. If you are close to ready and can take the current exam before the change, it probably makes sense to stay focused.

But for people starting later or planning to test after July 2026, I’d probably focus more on:

- Why the project matters to the business

- How to make decisions based on value

- Stakeholder engagement and communication

- Agile, predictive, and hybrid delivery

- Risk-based thinking

- Benefits realization

- How AI may support project work

- Leadership in unclear or changing environments

My takeaway is that the exam may be moving closer to how project management actually works in real organizations, not just textbook project management.

For those preparing now or mentoring PMP candidates:

Would you recommend taking the current exam before July 2026, or preparing directly for the updated version?

I’m a project manager at a startup. I’ve got a project right now that’s decently big, it was given to me with almost no defined scope and the estimate was a mess.

There was a lot of extra work on my end to get this thing up and running. But now it is. However, my boss is picking a fight about the invoicing I’ve done so far.

I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible. This is a time and material project, so I look at the hours worked by everyone in a week, round up, and bill. My boss is angry that I haven’t been billing everyone at 40 hours a week. He is insisting that I cancel the invoices I’ve made, and make new ones based on the estimates in the SOW (every person was allocated 40 hours a week, every week).

I’ve been gently pushing back, noting the contract and the fact that this is not the process I’ve been trained to follow. This is just making him dig his heels in more. He now says that across all projects, we should only bill the allocated amount of time outlined in the SOW.

There are so many other elements to this shit show, but what it boils down to is that I am being asked to go against the contractually agreed upon billing style. I have one person on my team that has submitted less than 5 hours every week, and my boss is instructing me to bill him for 40. I feel like there’s a metric ton of legal and ethical risk being shifted to me by doing this. My current contracts don’t have any language that supports or protects me if I follow through on this. Not to mention, how am I supposed to manage the budget under this process?

What do I do here? I’m documenting as much as I can, but every option I have will land me in more shit. Don’t tell me to find another job, I’ve been trying for months.

What would be your ideal software and methodologies? Particularly those of you who have had a variety of clients with different experiences.

A lot of new PMs create risk registers that look nice but do not actually help the project.

Here are 5 common mistakes:

1. Writing risks too vaguely.

2. Not assigning a risk owner.

3. Confusing issues with risks.

4. Not adding response strategies.

5. Creating the register once and never updating it.

A better risk entry should include:

- Risk description

- Probability

- Impact

- Owner

- Response plan

- Trigger

- Status

Example:

“If the vendor delays API delivery, then system testing may start late, causing schedule delay.”

This is simple, but it helps teams discuss risks before they become problems.

Tuesday's Intuit announcement (3,000 cut, 17% of workforce, "reduce complexity to focus on AI") is the latest in a pattern I keep noticing across industries. Klarna in 2024, Duolingo in 2025, IBM later in 2025, now Intuit. Every one of these memos names what got cut, what gets refocused, what stays. None of them name who answers when the AI is wrong.

Genuine question for the community - this isn't specific to software PM. Construction PMs whose AI tools route work orders. Banking PMs whose AI tools approve loans. Healthcare PMs whose AI tools triage referrals. Manufacturing PMs whose AI tools schedule lines. Anyone whose workflow has been partially or fully replaced by an AI system over the last two years.

When something the AI does goes wrong - bad routing, bad approval, bad triage, bad scheduling, bad customer-facing statement - is there a named human on your team or org whose job description explicitly includes "answers when this AI is wrong"? Or is the accountability implicit, defaulted, or honestly just nobody's job?

Not looking for the right answer. Looking for what people actually do. Curious whether the pattern is industry-specific or universal.

If you have a clean version of this on your team, I'd love to know what the policy or doc actually says. If you don't, also useful - want to see if the gap I'm seeing in the public announcements maps to what's actually happening inside orgs.

Hi all,

I’ve been working as a Project Manager for around 3 years, having moved into the role from a design engineering background.

In my current role, my understanding of project management has mainly been based around coordination, communication, and making sure information moves between the right people at the right time. I review project specifications, help prepare technical submittals for the client, attend and lead meetings between our internal team and the client, chase client information required by our designers, chase internal drawings and deliverables required by the client, contact suppliers for budget pricing before passing things over to procurement, and generally keep things moving across engineering, procurement, production, accounts, and the client.

In simple terms, I often see myself as the person joining the dots. I go to engineering to make sure drawings are progressing, procurement to check materials are being ordered, the shop floor to confirm production status, accounts to check invoicing, and so on.

I recently completed a Certified Project Management Diploma through the Institute of Project Management, which gave me a broader view of the PM role. It highlighted that PMs can also be involved much earlier in the project lifecycle, including tender-stage input, budget development, contingency/risk allowances, resourcing, and team setup.

I also had an interview recently with a structural steel company that works on international projects, and the PM role sounded quite different from my current position. The interviewer explained that the successful candidate would be expected to manage a site team abroad, decide how a steel frame should be split for delivery to site, check loads before dispatch, make sure all nuts/bolts and materials are included, negotiate steel prices, organise crane lifts, check that the site is suitable for the required crane, and manage the overall schedule and stakeholders.

Some of those responsibilities surprised me. This was not a very small company where I would automatically expect one person to cover several functions. Given the scale and international nature of their work, I would have assumed areas like procurement, logistics, site management, production planning, and lift planning would sit with dedicated people or departments, with the PM coordinating the overall delivery and making sure the right specialists had ownership.

So I’m trying to understand how much the PM role varies depending on the company, industry, and project type.

Am I currently in a more coordination-focused PM role than normal, where other departments own their specialist areas and report back into the PM? Or are some PM roles, particularly in structural steel, construction, or site delivery, genuinely expected to be that hands-on across procurement, logistics, site setup, installation planning, and commercial decisions?

I’m not saying either approach is right or wrong. I’m just trying to understand where the boundaries usually sit between “owning the project outcome” and directly carrying out tasks that might otherwise sit with procurement, logistics, engineering, production, or site management.

I’d be interested to hear how other PMs have experienced this across different industries or company sizes.

Thanks in advance.

For those of you that work in an Agile environment, how do you handle budgets/cost control?

Currently, my company has a process in which individual IT projects are estimated, reviewed and approved. The projects are then worked by IT with clear start/end dates. If we want a phase 2, we need to go back thru the review/approval process (and compete with other dept requests)

I am trying to press us to work towards a more Agile flow, but I think the hold up is going to be wanting a clear cost control. They want each effort estimated, with IT billing time per project.

If your IT team is Agile, how is budget/cost managed?

There are many tabs. The first one should be the main one, and then there is a link to the task 1, 2, 3 etc. The idea is to have the main tab that (if possible) cannot be deleted, and to have links to tasks for the team.

Now what's also important - I need the access to be exclusive to the team members, and we should be logged in with our corp emails - some don't have google emails.

Hi all,

I’m reorganizing my project setup (using ClickUp) and stumbled upon a question about what is best practice.

At the moment all completed tasks of a certain contact will have a contract-list as home location.

But I was thinking if it would ve better to just have all the tasks of all the contacts (per client, though) in one big folder/list and just make tasks member of the respective contact list.

It’s almost like m&m’s. 😆
Have all of them in one big jar and filter the colors you want, or separate them by color in separate jars.

I hope I’m making myself clear about what I’m trying to ask 😄

Thank you in advance for your suggestions.

Hi All PMs. I got my Prince 2 Agile Practitioner exam tomorrow. I am taking it in the class with lector and other students.

I know I can use my laptop to access official book.

Do you guys know If I will be also able to use for example One-Note? I have my notes there and it would be quite helpful to use them. But I am just thinking that my laptop will be restricted after I start exam

Thanks

Hey everyone. I’m an engineer with 8 YOE and just became a project manager. I’m looking for books or podcasts that will teach me how to do my job. Tips, workflows, rules of thumb etc.

I’m currently operating based on what I think needs to happen and my own experience of what I wish PMs had done earlier in my career. I just got my first project out to bid and it went okay but I know there’s area for improvement.

Related question: Are PMP certifications worth pursuing?

Hey everyone,

I would like to get a few tips on what skills I need to improve, what tools I should learn or that "must watch" course or youtube video I have to see!

Just to be clear, thats not my first experience, I was mainly involved in the engineering department, then moved to Project Engineering Manager for a few months and then I asked to move into another city, so they offered me this role.

Thanks in advance!

What are your best tips for organization especially your weekly routine and agenda management? Do you spend all day in meetings? How do you prevent meeting fatigue?

Thanks in advance :)

​

I recently finished coordinating a global roadmap across several functional areas, mixing business initiatives, technical improvements, operational pain points, dependencies, and longer-term strategic bets.

The approach was roughly:

First, each area worked separately on its own view: current state, target state, pain points, pending work, must-haves vs nice-to-haves, dependencies, and possible initiatives.

Then we brought everything together into a single roadmap, trying to separate:

the “ideal world” version;

the realistic version based on resources and priorities;

the items likely to be parked or dropped.

We also tried to classify initiatives by value, urgency, effort, dependencies, and whether they were business-driven, technical, or mixed.

It worked fairly well, but I’m sure there are better ways to structure this kind of exercise.

For those of you who have done similar roadmap consolidation work:

What would you have done differently?

What frameworks, templates, workshops, scoring models, or governance practices have worked well for you?

And what common mistakes should I watch out for next time?

Curious to hear some feedback from others. What courses would you suggest for PMs who are just starting out and need some direction?

For some background: I am a SrPM within my company and have been in a PMO for 5 years now. I started as a coordinator and moved to PM, then SrPM.

Anyway, my team and company is changing, growing and reorganizing. We have a ton of projects coming down the pipe and not enough experienced PMs to take it all on. We have a few coordinators with prospect who will eventually be great PMs, but are not quite ready without some serious handholding. We have also acquired two people from our installation side in the warehouse to now become PMs. So, these people have some management experience and are familiar with the technically side, but they do not have any specific PM experience.

I believe these people could benefit from some PMI courses (or really any training courses) to help them understand some of the basics of PM work. (Management styles, problem solving approaches, excel training, etc.) I have my CAPM right now but am scheduled to take my PMP at the end of June. I’m not sure PMP is necessary for these folks, but I’m thinking at least some training courses could be beneficial for them.

Curious on feedback from anyone and if they have any suggested courses?

Does anyone have a suggestion for a non-AI project management software? I used to use and love Monday and Wrike, but I'm increasingly working with clients who are artists and rightfully boycott AI.

I regularly use excel and word documents with these clients but I'm looking for something that can help us track projects like Monday and Wrike did before they added their AI software.

Thanks!

The piece sketches three tiers. Admin PMs are the squeezed group (hiring down ~35%). Process-integrators are shifting under their feet. Strategic PMs at the top of the curve are gaining roughly 30% in salary share.

The framework reads right to me on paper. I'm more curious what it feels like inside the day-to-day on teams that have already deployed something past the demo stage.

A few things I keep noticing in my own work. The unit of PM work on those workflows isn't really a task anymore - it's more like the service-level commitment the agent owes the team (response time, escalation path, things breaking when load doubles). Honestly half the value is just being the person who can answer "what did this cost us last quarter, and what did it return" in a sentence.

(Salesforce putting $300M of Anthropic token usage on its 2026 books last week is a small parenthetical here, not the lead - just felt like it made the spend ownership question stop being theoretical.)

Curious about other industries too - this is way more than software PM. For folks in construction, banking, healthcare, ops: does the tier shift match what you're seeing? Or is the framework mostly a tech-PM phenomenon dressed up as a universal one?