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A recent Slack exchange in a Project Mangement group. I hang out in too many Slack channels. Why are people like this? Please call out bullshit when you see it. Christine Nov 14th at 5:14 AM Hi…
A recent Slack exchange in a Project Mangement group. I hang out in too many Slack channels. Why are people like this? Please call out bullshit when you see it. Christine Nov 14th at 5:14 AM Hi…
Why You Need This Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. This is a very high level RACI sheet to log the basics of who's on point for what. They can get much more complicated but it's good at…
You hand your dev team a brief and ask for estimates. Maybe it's just a stack of mocks and a loose assertion of the client's preferred stack. Or maybe you get a proper RFP. Whatever it is, you gotta…
Why You Need This A project brief can be a useful guidepost when planning and collaborating on a project. Whether you need a brief or not is up to you. These tend to be more important for projects…
Project management isn't just running standup and updating a Google document. It's a creative and strategic position. Are you a highly-organized self-starter who can manage the details without losing…
Why You Need This Why does your PM need it's own RACI? Because our work can be invisible when done well. Your work deserves to be accounted for in the project and without this level of breakdown, your…
Why You Need This A decision log serves a few purposes. Where I find it to be most valuable is as a gift to your future self or perhaps other project spelunkers. Over the course of a project there…
Of course you care about security and of course, you wouldn't just sticky note the Jenkins admin password to your lead dev's monitor. Perish the thought! For any non-trivial project, you will have to…
Why You Need This You should pay a professional to do accessibility auditing, especially if they are a member of a marginalized group due to aspects of their abilities. But we can't always unlock that…
Why You Need This These templates were made in an agency context and might make zero sense for your use case. They are skeletons and do not have fancy calculations everywhere. But! They may prove…
If you think a lot about the planning fallacy and question your optimism bias this Freakonomics podcast episode is perfect for you, and any project manager really. Featuring a PM from Asana…
Aligning your team and having a plan is critical. No question about that. For a low-friction way to get that and build a culture around your team so they self-organize that way, you can use this small…
Slack has a very simple yet powerful feature called Reminders. The syntax takes a little getting used to. I've found them to be a low stress, high impact. Here's a few ways we've made them work for…
Why You Need This Of course you defined scope already. And of course you called out what's definitely not in scope. But that's just not how software works. Especially in an agency context. Your scope…
You've heard of the iron triangle of project management: Budget/Cost, Timeline/Schedule, Scope/Features. Sometimes you will see this with Quality shoved into the middle. Other sources have quality as…
Why You Need This You need a meetings and communication plan with a known and predictable schedule. These moments are the heartbeat of the project. The plan will also help onboard new team members. If…
Looking for a project manager with agency experience in any capacity (as a dev, QA, admin, PM, anything). The needs of this role are pretty classic to PM and include but are not limited to the…
Why You Need This Your project estimates will need to be defensible both internally and externally. In your project planning you should have these phases mapped out with at least a back-of-the…
I've been immersed in client services lately and wanted to share a very simple yet handy template. For every client project you have in flight, you should be sending a weekly checkin email about it…
I'm really allergic to forcing standup into the out-of-the-box shape at all costs. You can still meet the intention while iterating on the process. Do you read off the project tracker? if not, try it…
You have your project all planned out. Your communications plan is ready to go. The kick-off deck is ready for the meeting. The team is all lined up. They've had buy-in participating in the…
Let's be real, The Viper Pit just sounds cool. Don't you want to be in the viper pit, on the viper team, doing viper things? Of course, you do. That's the informal name we use for technical kickoffs…
After years of deftly avoiding it and begrudgingly tolerating it when unavoidable, I'm now implementing it. This is how mind-blowingly awful the out of box experience is with Mingle. Apparently Mingle…
Why You Need This A charter can be one of the most useful tools in a project managers toolbox. The scope, vision and clarity this document provides should last the entire project through and should…
Why You Need This Having an end to end mapping of your project is critical to managing it. With a high level view you can map out not just the implementation but the whole program or project in a…
Ten percent doesn't sound very big. Sometimes as a tester we can only make so much of a dent. Can we test the product and coach our team towards quality so that the app responds 10% faster? Can we…
A rule to live by is: never misuse time. Always communicate the meeting value to the attendees. To make the best use of meetings, please consider the following: Check your teammate's schedules before…
Beyond the project hard facts of budget, stakeholders, dates, and milestones, your project should have a high-level charter that helps align you with the client and the team with the vision. This can…
Why You Need This You need a quality and testing plan for your projects. This one is just a scaffold and not heavyweight at all. It's enough to get you going but not enough to take you there. I have…
Why You Need This Your using a continuous improvement methodolgy somewhere in your process. This will naturally include moments to review and reflect on the status quo. Use these questions to help…
Begin with the end in mind, as they say. Your client services team should have a plan for what happens after the boat is in the water. You don't want to just disappear on your client. It's a…
Why You Need This Logging risks and opportunities together gives you a more holistic view of the project. You will want to leverage this in the planning stages to help figure out your budget. There…
Why You Need This To log and track your internal and external stakeholders, with quick access to their vitals. Making this available to your team will help with onboarding. If you are using a RACI…
Why You Need This These templates are for logging your browser support for a project. Your client will either know offhand what they want and can fill it in themselves. If they really know what they…
I’m a fervent believer in code reviews. I assert anyone on the team can meaningfully contribute . I think they should have some measure of formalization and templatization . I tend to speak of them…
As a QA or TPM who doesn't code (or maybe isn't for this particular project) but is participating in the development process and is reasonably responsible for the quality of the system, you should…
You're a project manager, coordinator, QA or a lead. Whatever your role or title, you're helping to steer the ship and leading by example, with or without authority. You're just making it happen. One…
Just like your developers and testers want to be able to debug a stacktrace, so do your project managers want to trace issues at the project level. How do we do this? How do we work in a traceable way…
Whether you are a PM or QA, you want to have your finger on the pulse of a project. If you've got Slack, you can leverage applications and integrations to find that vein. Create a dedicated channel in…
We all know that Documentation is Critical and Shared passwords are too . We may not always need a multi-page wiki document but getting a quick list of project vitals and pinning them in a Post in…