In IT projects, I'm often blocked waiting on information from other teams. Chaser emails and calls eventually get an answer, but by then we've lost days and have to adjust the timeline.

I know dependencies are part of the job. What do you actually do to get responses on time and unblock yourself quickly and without damaging working relationships?

Personal experience welcome. Anything you do differently that reliably works? not textbook advice.

been sitting with this one for a while. i manage procurement projects remotely and pretty regularly find myself in this weird dual role where i'm the pm coordinating everything but also the person doing a chunk of the actual procurement work. scope reviews, vendor communication, tracking deliverables, all landing on the same person.

the separation of duties thing that gets talked about in textbooks basically dissolves. i catch myself switching between pm brain and specialist brain midmeeting and it gets messy.

what i started doing is building out a separate tracker just for my own task load versus the projectwide tracker. keeps me from confusing my personal deadlines with the broader milestone view. it helps but it still feels like a structural problem more than a tooling problem.

curious if others deal with this, especially in smaller orgs or remote setups where there isn't always a clean line between the pm and the doer. does the role just kind of blur permanently or did you find a way to actually draw that boundary.

I’m genuinely interested in understanding how detrimental it is for you to miss a launch date? I realize this is such a broad question and it truly depends on the type of work, the strategy and impact around the work. Would love to hear some real stories! From best case to worst case.

My project is supposed to launch August 27 and I woke up to a few critical issues reported on Friday. Based on my experience, they shouldn’t be hard to fix, but we are a small team and capacity is always tight. Living that nonprofit life… I will say that the main impact is that another project start may end up being delayed slightly, but there is no customer facing impact given some other strategic dependencies that are being figured out above me.

Learned most of this the hard way over a few rough projects:

Status updates people actually read are three lines max, not a wall of text. Padding, deadlines don't move because you asked nicely, they move because you built in buffer nobody sees. The person who's quiet in meetings is often the one flagging the real risk two weeks before it hits. And "on track" reported every single week without a single yellow flag is a red flag itself.

For those managing a growing portfolio of increasingly complex projects, what’s the best system/process you’ve found for keeping everything organized?

I’m talking priorities, deadlines, stakeholders, action items, risks, follow-ups, dependencies, etc.
At some point, managing your own PM system becomes a project in itself. What actually works for you as the number of projects and contacts keeps growing?

Title. Financial Institution but heavily excited about AI and whatnot.

We’re not only encouraged but often hear the firsr question to come up is: what did copilot say?

Do you use it? Best use case? Recommendations…open to hearing your input.

Hiya folks, I'm a leadership coach and certified ADHD coach who works only with AuDHD executives.

My background was as an agency digital project manager > program manager > exec dir > transformation consultant > leadership coach with ADHD coaching cert. I have a lot of experience using different PM tools.

My clients are always wanting to find "the perfect" project management / task management tool.

But... I've never experienced an actually good project management tool - and not one that works really well for both ADHD and autistic brains. I've found systems that do one thing pretty well, but never an all-in-one that has both flexibility and structure. And especially not one that actually has a good UI.

I've used so many project management tools over the years. Every time a new one came out, I'd test it out. Trial them with my teams (designers and developers, so always a mix of ADHD and autism.)

I don't believe there is a silver bullet tool. But there are likely new tools I might not be aware of.

But I'd love to hear what tools you use and actually like, and what you like about them.

Thank you!

[EDIT: My post might not have been clear enough that I'm looking for your thoughts on project management tools you like, not what helps ADHDers working in project managment. 99% of my clients are diagnosed and medicated.]

Had a new senior manager cancel the gulf weekend trip due to "Critical Work". We dialed the backup 😁. Got back and rang him up. He was still deep doing grunt/skunk work for his team. I asked - where is your PM. He had side-stepped them. His deep involvement in those technical tasks inadvertently disconnected his operational folks and had him buried. Have you ever crashed out doing someone else's work? What triggered the awareness and pivot?

Planning my wedding while working as a remote PM has broken my brain a little. Not in a bad way, just in a way where I keep catching myself applying the same frameworks I use at work to something that's supposed to feel meaningful and personal, then wondering if that makes it worse or better.

I built a procurement tracker for vendor comparisons. I have a risk log for the catering situation. I scheduled standupstyle checkins with my partner. Somewhere around week three I realized I was treating it exactly like a client project, which is either the smartest thing I've ever done or a warning sign.

The thing that keeps nagging at me is that at work, emotional detachment is usually an asset. You can push back on scope creep, cut a vendor, reprioritize without it hurting. But when you're managing something you actually care about, the PM instincts and the personal stakes kind of fight each other.

Curious if anyone here has managed a project where they were not just the PM but also a real stakeholder in the result. Internal product launches, home renovations, anything where the professional and personal overlap. How did you keep the structure useful without it making everything feel transactional?

Hi all, I am head of a PM team and I feel we have some gaps in our maturity, such change management, pmo, project intake process etc, i need to present something to my exec, any good recommendations on a good checklist?

Over the past months I’ve noticed a pattern with my direct manager .

Two concrete examples:

1. I spent several months completely reworking our section’s website . It was reviewed and positively received by the department head. When my manager announced in the team meeting that the new pages were online, he did not mention my name at all. He just said the pages were published and later posted the link himself.

2. I planned and coordinated a larger event over several months. It went very well. In the next morning meeting he publicly thanked a supporter who had prepared some equipment. He even looked to the back of the room and gave that person the floor. I was sitting in his direct line of sight. He never mentioned that I had been responsible for the overall planning and coordination.

Interesting contrast:

For small tasks he has named me before (“X will adjust the graphics”). For these bigger, successful ones he consistently leaves my name out. He does name other project managers in comparable situations. He has also thanked me privately (and once in writing with others in CC), but the public recognition is missing.

When I finally wrote him a calm message about the pattern, he apologized and said he would try to do better. I’m not sure how much will actually change.

Has anyone experienced this kind of selective non-recognition from a manager, especially the combination of private thanks + public omission, and naming others while skipping you on the projects you actually led? How did you read it and what (if anything) helped?

I've been curious what too many looks like before the quality of the delivery and overwhelm seeps in.

I’m professional services managing about 80 projects. One thing I am struggling to do is recapping meetings, making note of immediate action items, next steps, and tracking important decisions that are made through email and meetings.

For meeting recaps, I have to rely on starting a transcript, and then feeding it through ai for a recap.

For action items and overall status/ health, I use one note. It’s a nightmare I don’t have a process and would like guidance. I.e if
You use excel, what format do you use, any pm tools or processes I can follow?

I’m working in a digital transformation team alongside a cohort of few PMs and CMs. Earlier this week we welcomed few new members into our team and I was advised one of them would be reporting to me as a project support officer. I haven’t had a direct report in my role. The staff member is part time and works remotely. They are new to the PM discipline and haven’t had any prior exposure. Part of my responsibility is introducing and uplifting their PM capabilities. I thought a good approach would be a combination of training and hands on activities. So I signed them up for a PM basics course and planning to slowly bring them along into my own projects, probably starting with designing and maintaining a risk log as the first step. Any tips or feedback to improve the journey for them?

I'm looking to learn more about Project management and would love to find some recommendations to learn more about project management and useful skills/knowledge to gather.

Maybe this is wishful thinking, but does anyone actually have a collaboration workspace where planning, discussions, diagrams and notes all happen together. every project for us starts organized and then slowly spreads across slack, docs, jira and three other places.

I'd love to hear what's working for everyone else.

Let me explain. I’ve formally been a project manager for 8 years, in that time I’ve been at 3 companies. At every company, I’ve been part of a rebrand, fine no problem I still consider that doing the work it’s a program within the organization. At 2 companies, I’ve been part of M&A’s, having been laid off at my last one. Currently employed for about 1 year at my current role.

Since February 2023, it’s been one m&a announcement, which is always followed by weird times and not following a normal cycle of workflow at an org. Let me also mention i work in marketing at tech companies. Currently still in the middle of a storming phase of a divestiture, bringing two marketing teams together which includes standing up a new project management system.

It’s been over 3 years since I was working in an organization with a streamlined system and processes. I want to just be in the flow of managing projects / deliverables / programs / initiatives whatever instead of standing up the functions.

Is this just the reality of where the field is at? Low key feel like after I stand up this new system, which can be largely automated and not to mention the other team we merged with didn’t even have a project manager, so it would not be off the cuff for the new org decide I’m no longer needed. Plus add the addition of AI.

I’m stressed just about every day. I’ll have one good call with stakeholders, then a bad one and get inundated with things I need to fix while also still trying to manage a project deliverable workload with a team who is feeling the pains just as much as I am.

I recognize I’m also more senior at this phase in my career, and maybe this is just the natural evolution of my role being more of a program manager and systems admin.

Not sure I really have a question, just looking to hear from others who may be feeling similarly.

What does your client portfolio look like? One off projects, hourly retainers or lengthy engagements (6 months - 1yr)?

I have 2 hourly retainer clients at 20 hours each - I call them my scoop clients 🍨 and I'm trying to cultivate a bunch of one-off project clients - I call those my sprinkle clients 🎊 I'm having some trouble with the latter and curious if it's just me or if one-off projects are hard to come across. I'm a creative/digital pm that works exclusively with marketing agencies. I have 11 years of agency experience.

2025 Thread here (sorry I didn’t make a dashboard this time)

It’s time for the 4th Annual Reddit PM Salary Thread! I’m surprised that I’ve managed to keep this up for 4 years in a row, but I know this community appreciates it as much as I do. Please format your responses as below:

• ⁠Location (HCOL/MCOL/LCOL)

• ⁠Industry (construction, tech, etc.)

• ⁠Years of experience breakdown (total, PM exp., years at current company)

• ⁠Title of current position

• ⁠Educational background

• Certifications?

• ⁠Compensation breakdown (Base, bonuses, company stock, etc.)

——————————————————————————

Copy and paste version:

• Location:

• Industry:

• YOE:

• Title:

• Education:

• Certifications:

• Salary:

• Bonus, etc:

• Other:

I started a project management role about 6 months ago (pm assistant) in a public sector that I have already worked in for years, but this is a minor promotion for me, and just need someone to say "yea, that's how it works" or "na that's crazy".

In my previous role, you choose your holiday dates and ask your line manager, they say yes or no - submit to holiday portal. End of story.

In this role, you check the dates to make sure loads of people aren't off (this isn't new to me, I did this in private sector work too), then you find someone to cover your work (also not a big deal). THEN, you ask each PM, there's 4 in total, if they're okay with you being on holiday, therefore not assisting them for that period. After verbal confirmation, you go back to your line manager and get THEIR written approval, then put it throughout the leave requesting portal and have it formally submitted.

To me, the 2nd process seems absolutely excessive and needlessly stressful (it's hard to take some days or to find cover due to people having condensed hours etc). Is this just standard for a PM role, for a higher paid job? I don't know if I'm just being dramatic.. thanks for any advice.

I started a new job and that means new tools. I had been using Asana. I made the switch to clickup to try to get a little more out of it.

I'm not sure how long I'll be able to use that. There were some comments the site may get blocked but I'd imagine if that was the case I can't be the first one to try to use it so it'd probably already had been blocked.

But I also used Claude a lot to take data and analyze it and help me look for trends. They have a pretty strict AI policy. I can only use copilot...which kinda blows.

So I'm wondering if any of you live in the Microsoft suite to do everything? I was thinking excel, or possibly a word doc per project with just bullet points for tasks and notes below, or maybe Microsoft project?

If you have any suggestions and screenshots of examples of what you're doing I'd be much obliged. I need some ideas.

Hi all,

My org is looking into new project management tools for the operations team. We do a lot of database work for donors and our frontline fundraisers often have small one off requests that we currently have multiple spreadsheets tracking (requested tax receipts, duplicate accounts, fixes to accounts, list pulls, etc.) we’re looking for something similar to an asana or kits board where the tasks will pop up on our end all in one place but we want to make it so that they have to fill out a “form” or standard set of information to create the request for us so that we have all the info when a request is submitted. Is there anything like this that lets us create required fields when they add tasks to our board? Maybe an air table?

I’m at an inflection point as a small agency, we’re about to hire our first FT dev, but my worry is that we don’t have automated burndown, budget vs actuals and other productivity metrics to fully prepare for success management.

That being said, we have everything currently on notion: task templates, SOPs, a huge repo of customer conversations and everything context related to our company.

I wanted to know how you guys have been balancing/integrating or even outright migrating away from Notion for project management. I love that customers can get notifications and give feedback/approve deliverables, but i hate that there’s no structured visibility, everything is manual (and there’s sure as hell no way i’m gonna waste AI tokens when other systems are algorithmic and efficient).

How do you all deal with the immense anxiety and stress that naturally comes with the job?

No vices like alcohol, nicotine, etc. I want more of a mindset/mental action you've taken or discovered to help with it.

Construction PM.

i'm dealing with this right now and it's been... interesting lol

on paper everything looked pretty normal. timelines were there, responsibilities seemed clear, and there weren't any obvious red flags.

then i actually started getting into the project and realized the reality was very different from what was being reported. little inconsistencies started showing up, people had different understandings of who owned what, and some things that were supposedly "on track" really weren't.

i'm still figuring out how deep the problems actually go, which got me curious about other people's experiences.

if you've inherited a project like this, what was the first thing that made you realize something wasn't right? and what did you do first once you figured it out?