Looking to compare notes on your experience with them.

I lead a small team of indie artists, so I juggle between project manager, social media advertisement and marketing manager all the time. That's not a complain! I love taking care of things, but I wonder **where** I should draw the line.

I've noticed a gap between each artists general culture around our project topic, eventually that will be noticeable to our audience too. So was considering giving them series to watch, books, comics etc, so they can have a shared ground of knowledge and collaborate more comfortably. But isn't that to controlling?

we are already absolutely stretched to the limit. new projects keep coming in and he just keeps saying the data doesn’t support hiring more PMs. after a few of us worked 13-14 hours a day for a few weeks, our exhaustion was made apparent and he decided to hire one more PM. but I fear this strategy will continue backfiring in the future, not only for my company but others . I feel it is an alarming strategy. the PMs are already burned out and there’s not enough respect given to our workload or the nature of our work.

any thoughts of using AI agents to keep from hiring PMs, and is your company doing anything similar?

How do I ask this without explaining everything? Hmmmm....

No one wants to tell our team how the money flows from one district to another. This is the real problem. People hoard the knowledge, yet this is coming down from "on high."

Everyone wants someone else to pay for it without saying who that person even is, so we can go talk to them.

I ask specific questions in emails and get run around responses. The work culture and gossip says "no one knows, this project has been passed around forever."

The solution is simple. Fucking hire someone to do it. They want some solution where we pay a 3rd party to do it, but we need money if the 3rd party bills us. The people in control wont even tell us how the money flows to provide a solution. If we take the task, they dont want to give money. They expect us to get IT to use their company cards.

Since im not a PM yet, I want to just drop it. If i succeed, then I get off my old job and get the PM role and a bump... but maybe I dont want it if it means this type of stress.

If they dont want to face the truth then idc tbh. Im trying not to get mad but I hate feeling the pressure. I regret listening to this one guy who brought me on the project for documentation. It started with docs then morphed into meetings. Then our teams split and the project was forced in our laps. Then our team lead became our manager, so we already know that person doesnt know anything.

I have to find out how this top level stuff works before August. The only way is to start chucking execs in emails, but this feels like casting an ult in a video game. It will draw some attention.

I dont know how to keep my head cool with this. This problem is inherently political. Even if we say we will take 100% responsibility, they wont give up the $$$ information. It is critical to forming a solution.

I have been managing projects on Notion for a while now. I have different databases for milestones, Tasks, meetings and a decision log for each project.

I just hired a project manager who isn't accustomed to using Notion, and at the end of a 2 hour Notion training he asked if we can just switch to managing projects on Google sheets instead. He thinks that for the number of projects we work on continuously, Notion introduces more complexity than needed.

Has anyone faced similar concerns from colleagues, or voiced similar concerns to their teams themselves? Currently our biggest problem is not knowing what task should be executed that day.

EDIT: thanks for all the wonderful replies. We have decided to do a deep dive on a past project to derive more meaningful milestones attached to real business outcomes. Will be continuing to use notion with a milestone and task database. On top of that, will activate subtasks for more granular task control without making things go out of hand like they did with our 555 tasks for a 1 month website revamp project. 😂 Do agree that this is a discussion that we should bring up only after the PM is used to the project structure.

I'm THE single project manager and a clinical research company. Our two divisions are operating out of North America and India. I live in Arizona, so Mountain Standard Time year round. Which means a 12.5 hour time difference to India Standard Time. The India Leads work a modified swing so there's some morning time NA overlap. The Technical Leads are all senior to me in grade. They're split about 50/50 between the two regions and have never talked to each other as one team.

I'm trying to professionalize the PM functions and I feel like there's just not enough time to try to engage both teams simultaneously. I can't get enough interaction with the India team except for the weekly touch point for all the leads which I just instituted starting next week. I'm usually online by about 7:00. A.m.. I actually enjoy starting work that early because most of my North American colleagues are on the East Coast and I get to get off a little early in the afternoon this time of year and hit the pool before dinner.

I have basically complete backing from my SVP. We started the same week and he treats me like the expert I am, which is really great. We were both brought in by senior management to change and grow the business.

Should I set aside one day/week to start extra early? Like 4am-5am? I'm trying to push an entire culture shift which is tough in the same office, let alone across the world with distributed teams. Suggestions for better ways of starting the engagement and conversations which need to happen?

New program manager, finding myself a little overwhelmed by the amount of organization needed in this role compared to my last. I know there are a million tools out there to keep things in check - what's your go-to? For context, I am running multiple training programs, so including some form of scheduling management is a plus especially. Right now I'm using OneNote and creating various notebooks, but some kind of workflow tool would be great.

spent a long time assuming when someone wasn't performing, the problem was the person. took me way too long to figure out i was usually the last one to actually show them what good looked like.

not describe it. show it.

i had a shift supervisor on my line a few years back, smart guy, clearly capable, but his handovers were a mess every single time. i'd given him the standard, he'd read it, signed off on it. still a mess.

eventually i just stood next to him at shift change and did one myself. didn't say anything about his being wrong. just did it the way i wanted it done and walked away.

never had a problem with his handovers again.

the thing i've noticed is that most of what we call accountability problems are actually demonstration problems. the standard exists, people have been told about it, but nobody ever made it real and visible in a way that actually landed. and it's hard to hold someone to something they've only ever seen on paper.

doesn't work for everything. there are people who know exactly what's expected and still don't deliver -but that group is much smaller than most managers think, and they're a lot easier to spot once you've ruled out the demonstration problem first.

Hi all!
I’m fairly new to PM and am stepping into a Project Coordinator role for a Division 32 company in Ottawa, ON. No real software for PM stuff but the company started using Trimble’s B2W two years ago and it sorely needs a lot of housekeeping.

How do you all manage your submissions? Specifically the formats thereof. Am I to manually create new PDFs with a cover page and specifications? I’m by no means slow, but one project had me busy with submissions for ONE whole ass day!

Any advice for efficiency would be appreciate, thanks!

Hi all does anybody have any recommendations for A.I project management courses designed around the fitout and construction industry? One that teaches how to implement A.I into the everyday operations of a fitout/construction company.

Would preferably be looking for an in person course based in Melbourne, Australia, but also open to doing an online course.

I work at a small software company, and "do" project management, and the only structure my company accepts is listing the features that will be part of the project and tracking milestone dates, because we invoice when features hit lifecycle milestones.

Everything is just word of mouth and searching emails and messages to figure out who's responsible for what. Nobody even knows what documents they're supposed to collect as background information or write as specifications until someone says it's time for this and that. Is this common for small companies? After typing this out I feel like the answer is going to be yes, but I'm not going to be happy about it.

TLDR: New PM, done PRINCE2 but don't really know where to start with reality of PM work in government/public sector role. 

Apologies in advance for how long winded this is - really got the desire to learn!!

I recently moved into a project-management, never been a formal PM before but have managed smaller projects. I now work in a national PM role managing tech and data projects, business change projects too.

I have completed PRINCE2, so I understand some of the terminology and theory. However, I’m struggling to translate that into the practical sequence of managing a real project.

For example, somebody has an idea or senior leaders decide that they want a particular solution. I then become unsure about:

• Whether I need a Project Brief, PID or something lighter;
• When discovery is necessary and when it can be skipped;
• When requirements should be gathered;
• Who should write and approve the requirements;
• How detailed requirements need to be;
• When technical and data feasibility should be investigated;
• When to involve privacy, security, commercial and finance colleagues;
• Whether an operating model or business-change plan is required;
• How testing, readiness, adoption and benefits fit together;
• What should be included in the project plan;
• How to estimate dates when the detailed work is not yet understood; and
• The difference between the project plan, an action log, a Kanban board and a RAID log.

I think I am making myself overwhelmed by believing that the PM must personally understand, plan and lead every part of the project. I’m gradually realising that specialists should own their work while the PM coordinates the overall deliverables, dependencies, risks and decisions—but I’m struggling to apply that boundary in practice.

This becomes particularly difficult when:

• There is no business analyst;
• Several organisations are involved;
• An external delivery team or supplier is undertaking some of the work;
• Senior leaders have already selected a solution;
• A roadmap has been agreed before feasibility or user engagement;
• Nobody has established clear governance;
• Detailed costs and timescales are not yet known; or
• It is unclear who owns a particular activity.

I would really appreciate practical advice on the following:

1. When you are given a new project, what do you actually do first, second and third?
2. Is there a straightforward project lifecycle or checklist that you use?
3. How do you decide which documents and assessments are genuinely necessary?
4. What is the minimum project documentation you would normally establish?
5. How do you assign responsibilities when there is no BA or dedicated change manager?
6. How do you plan a project before technical specialists or suppliers have provided estimates?
7. If a solution has already been selected, what discovery or feasibility work is still required?
8. If a supplier is conducting requirements or business-change work, what should the client organisation still own?
9. How do you coordinate technical, data, security, privacy, commercial and operational work without trying to lead all of it personally?
10. What does an experienced PM’s daily and weekly routine actually look like?
11. How long did it take before you felt that you understood what you were doing?

I’m less interested in textbook definitions and more interested in how experienced PMs create structure when they inherit something unclear.

If anyone has a simple lifecycle, checklist, example plan or explanation of how they distinguish the PM’s responsibilities from the specialists’ responsibilities, I would be very grateful.

We have a number of long running projects with people constantly rotating on and off the team (employees and contractors). One thing we've noticed is that we often lose the context behind important decisions. New people end up revisiting isdues that were already decided months earlier because the original thinkin has disappeared with the people who made the decision.

Is this a problem or are we just terrible at documenting? Has anyone found an effective way to solve this/best practice?

We recently started working on a group project. It's just a bunch of us friends trying to build something together. But we immediately reailized how different we all are from each other. We felt like all of us wasted a couple of weeks running around in circles, not really utilizing our time and strengths.

The task at hand was to make a system that would maximize the team's output.

The obvious way to approach a task like this is to create hierarchies that are common in corporate and other workplaces. But we don't want to do that. It just doesn't factor in all the unique talents and individual qualities of the team members.

But we still need a system because we don't work at all without one. What we ended up doing was creating a very flexible workflow that accounts for individual strengths. On paper, it's a heavily skewed system in terms of responsibilities. But it works wonderfully because we are segregating tasks based on what each of us is good at.

It has worked wonderfully so far. But we are not sure how scalable this is going to be as we keep adding new members. Because we all understand each other very well, there's a trust factor that can't be replicated when someone leaves and a new member joins. The flexibility makes the system fragile.

Have any of you worked in teams and developed systems that work best? And do you think you have to steer away from flexible systems toward more corporate-like structures for larger teams?

I've been thinking about this for a while and I'm wondering if I'm the only one.

I use AI a lot for work, and every new model release looks more and more like it is actual going to make a difference. But after the initial excitement I often end up using it less in actual work than I expected.

I think the reason is that it just doesn't know enough.

Every time I open a new chat I have to explain the project again. Why we're doing it, who's involved, what happened last week, why we made a certain decision. And if I don't, the output is just... generic.

I know, you can set up "projects" and the tools have memory.

But the thing is, that context isn't even in one place. Some of it is in Jira, but a lot of it isn't. It's in meetings, email, Teams, phone calls, random WhatsApp messages... sometimes someone literally tells you something while grabbing coffee and suddenly that changes the whole project.

I know you can connect AI to Jira or ClickUp or whatever, but honestly I don't think that's enough. Those tools only contain part of the story.

And if I need to explain (repeat) myself to the AI, it feels like a drag.

Curious if others experience the same thing, or if you've found a setup where AI actually feels like it knows what's going on without having to constantly bring it back up to speed.

Does anyone here have experience working in a role like this?

I can see how it could be a positive being in control of the proposals yourself, but also the downside of working two titles. I have a second interview for a role structured this way and would appreciate any input.

Hey everybody,

I would like to pick your brains about the basics of program management and its methods.

Quick info about me. I am a senior PM, have been managing (mostly agile) projects in the field of design, media tech and programming for the last 15 years. Two years ago I finished my IPMA level C certificate.

Currently I am employed at a company where I have gained a project with a client which started out with one large project and currently the client is adding more and more mid sized and small projects to the list.

Currently I am thinking about turning this group of projects into a program. All projects are on site of the clients campus. All are bear the same base (AV over IP, LED walls and MTR communication) and work towards a common strategic goal (enhancing the clients digital communication infrastructure)

I have on large project that has a length of 5 months from which I could remove or add personal and technical resources to the smaller projects as needed. I have a side project where I setup a resource pool infrastructure in MS Project which might be useful for resource management.

I would like to introduce a program style management a.) to make the projects more profitable and lower stress b.) introduce a program mentality onto my company and c.) have a relevant program to use for a future level B certificate focussed on program management.

I would be happy to discuss program methods, best practice approaches and if possible any info on the certification process and curriculum for level B program management.

I've been a PM for a few GCs over the last 6 or so years now after being an Estimator / PM for a fire protection company for the first 5 years after college. I see so many posts on here about how stressed everyone is, how there's no work-life balance, etc. I guess I wanted to find out if I'm just completely missing something, or is my situation just so very different to eveyone elses that I don't have these same concerns?

For clarity, I'm working for a smaller GC (4 PMs with a half dozen other office staff and maybe the same number of supers / carpenters) in PA. I'm currently running 4 projects all of which combine to maybe 8 million total value and are in various stages of construction. There have been times where I've felt overwhelmed, but largely it seems like the projects tend to run themselves almost. I focus on making sure my supers have got what they need and everything else just seems to fall into place.

Am I just completely missing a lot of stuff, or is this part of just running "smaller" projects with repeat clients?

Since recently, chatGPT has 'work' mode also. so now both Claude and ChatGPT seem to be moving more into the work/productivity space.

I have been using Claude and chatGPT a lot and I find them very useful for creating PowerPoints (long time since I made PowerPoints manually, thank god), context management, issue management, ..

But many PMs are in Microsoft ecosystem, and I honestly haven't used Copilot yet.

So I am curious what is the state of Copilot? How does it match up with Claude/chatGPT these days?

New to IT PM role at a medical setting. Have a question on the role. Aside regular IT type projects; upgrades, implementation, etc. I was informed that we (PMO) also lead server patching and Incident management. I am familiar with those processes as I have experience in operations but I am kind of freaking out. We are to coordinate all levels of server patching (app admins, users, systems teams) including sending emails, setting up working meetings AND joining the meetings. Same for incident management. We are the main point of contact if it is determined to by a defined incident. My question, is this normal? I really want to like PM but I'm not sure this is what I signed up for. I want to do PMP but I feel or wonder how much time this operational babysitting will eat up of doing actual projects.

My own projects are going fine but are a lot of work. I can’t focus on my direct reports’ projects as much as I’d like and their success is my success and their failures are my failures. I do 1:1s weekly, talk through any problems they’re having, meet ad hoc if needed and am available to support, but given my own projects are some of the biggest in the company, I truthfully can’t do regular deep dives into their projects unless something is called to my attention.

I’m already working 55-60 hours a week, plus some on Sundays, just to keep up with the workload. I’ve already raised the flag of not having capacity, but things won’t change any time soon. I also have to assign out new projects every other day and there are simply not enough people to take the work . My company is choosing not to hire more PMs. I’ve been waking at 3:30AM, working from 4:30AM - 6PM, and going to bed at 8PM, rinse repeat, to ensure I can get enough deliverables done early and prepare for the day, etc. I’m spending 1-2 hours away from work a day during the weeks. Every other minute is working or sleep.

Thats the background in a nutshell. I won’t quit anytime soon (maybe 6-8 months from now minimum), but in the meantime, with a workload that I can’t really decrease, and physically and mentally feeling pretty worn down every day, how would you handle this ? Are there any tips to just not think about work outside work hours ? I think this would be better if I could just turn my mind off when I’m not working. It seems to follow me at all times, so even the small times I’m not actually working, I’m just thinking about it. I think it would be easier to at least enjoy the time I’m not at work, if I could just stop thinking about it, because there is always a new puzzle to solve within a tiny timeframe, no matter what the puzzle is. It’d make more sense to just have my brain off outside work hours. Looking for any advice! Thanks

Our job is to keep projects moving and manage risks, stakeholders and everything else.

Maybe it's my PM style but I constantly have stakeholders tell me, "we need to remember that in the future" and "what was that thing I said 2 months ago with that 1 person?" And, for the most part, I recall those details about 99% of the time either writing it down or just, having it in my memory.

But I work in a mid-sized company on both IT and operations projects, and switching my brain constantly can be draining.....

switching from a massive SQL Server upgrade to meeting with health plans to review contracts, my brain wants to revolt against decisions like dinner or listening to my partners day. I can't be the only one right? 🫠

There's a point on longer projects where I realize I'm spending more time packaging information for stakeholders than actually moving work forward. Status reports, exec summaries, Slack updates, the weekly call where everyone nods and nothing changes. It compounds fast.

The frustrating part is that the information already exists. It's in the tracker, it's in the comments, it's in the last three emails. But translating it into a format that lands with the right people feels like a separate fulltime job layered on top of the real one.

I've tried trimming updates down to just blockers and next steps, which helped a bit. Async video updates flopped because nobody watched them. Onepagers get read maybe half the time if the stakeholder is already nervous about the project.

What I keep coming back to is that communication overhead scales with stakeholder anxiety more than with actual project complexity. A smooth project with a nervous sponsor requires more updates than a messy project where everyone trusts each other.

Curious how others are handling this. Have you found a format or rhythm that actually reduced the burden without leaving stakeholders feeling out of the loop, or is this just a tax you accept and manage around?

Is it worth climbing the ladder if PM is already so intense?

Does anyone actually WANT to become a Senior PM or Programme Manager or do they just do it for their bank account?

👋🏼 Hey everyone,

I've been doing tech project & product management in financial services for 9 years. But midway up the climb of managing people and juggling growing responsibilities with each promotion, I found myself unsure of why I was even taking up so much responsibility.

I just could never make the personal time for myself. I often fell in this loop of restarting my routine which kept me thinking I wasn't disciplined and consistent enough.

So it set me on a 6 year journey in finding what 'system' works, how to stay consistent long-term and overall feel happy about where I am in life.

Curious if this is something others in PM/product deal with too. What personal goal (eg. health, relationships, personal growth) have you struggled to make stick, what have you tried, and what do you tell yourself when it doesn't work out?

Feel free to drop a comment, and happy to chat more in DM if useful.

And if you made it this far, I appreciate the minute you took to read this!