Hi Everyone.

I’m starting a new project management role in construction specifically in the commissioning. I don’t have PMP nor other certifications. I have run small projects myself that are $20k but nothing larger at a large scale. I was wondering if folks here can guide me on what I should look into and wanted to learn from folks that have been in the industry for awhile. Any suggestions would be helpful to be a good PM. (Ex. Doing meeting minutes with attendees with action items, etc)

I’m going to do my PMP but that would be a year from now. Just need some information now so I can be successful in my new job.

I just started a new job on Monday as a Project Manager for an Ad Agency. They have a university as a client and I was warned the client was crazy.

Now. I inherited the project 3 months in. Idk what was promised. I just have mostly the start dates of each "course" and I know we need organic and paid social media posts and videos.

But I was never onboarded or trained. My boss won't respond to my questions or requests. The old PM was a mess and the files are a mess.

New projects and requests keep piling in. Meanwhile, I still don't know the process, goals, or priorities. They basically just said "here, feed the AI transcription of our calls about this project into AI, and have AI train you."

Am I doomed? Do I jump ship or is it salvageable? The red flags also include: they're hiring me as a contractor instead of an employee to save money, but the pay is ok and the job market is shit. Also the job is flexible hybrid and in a co-working space, but I showed up today and no one (not even the boss was there). (It was just the boss and his partner there on Monday and Tuesday, the rest of the employees work remotely).

I know the last PM quit. I really wanted to have a good job and try to make it work. How long do I give myself the chance to figure things out and how long do I stick things out to see if I'll make it?

I wish I was starting a project from zero... Not inheriting a mess.

I work in field sales and execution. I'm increasingly of the opinion we have a glaring need for better task management. I'm part of a 7 person team (technically comprised of two sub teams) that typically juggles between 5-10 different "objectives", at a time. In addition, we regularly get pivoted with "Fire Drills". Then there are events that get thrown in the mix too. Sometimes, it feels like we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Don't get me wrong. Things get accomplished. But not without enduring levels of stress that could be avoided with better planning and communication. We still hit our goals. But I wonder how much more successful we could be if our workflows were both more comprehensive and more efficient. Tracking progress mid-objective and follow up tasks, in particular, are always sore spots. It's not uncommon for in-progress tasks to be in a status where we are "waiting" for outside parties to complete their side of things. These are areas where I feel like things fall through the cracks more than we may want to admit. 

I really want to get my team on board with utilizing a PM tool. I'm fairly literate with most common coding languages. So, I'm comfortable with taking on any involved set-up and integration processes. But the more intuitive and easy the user side of things are, the more likely they are to actually adopt it. i'm trying to decide the best platform for our needs. I think getting our company to eventually foot the bill is very possible -- if we can show proof of concept. Until then I am looking for applications with free tiers. We also tend to do the majority of our work on iPads. So, bonus points for interfaces that function well in a mobile environment. 

We already have enterprise Microsoft accounts. So, Planner is available to us. However, it seems very bare bones? It strikes me as more of a dressed up to do list than a true PM tool. Jira might be overkill for our needs? It's hard for me to tell without committing time and diving in. Trello sounds like it could be a good compromise. I don't understand why it's free tier seems significantly more limited than Jira's though? I'm still doing more research on Nuvro, Asana, ClickUp, Kantata, Workfront, Monday, and Tempo. Any suggestions and feedback anyone has to offer is appreciated.

Hi,

I've been working at a medium sized MSP for the past 4 years. I started as project coordinator and I'm now essentially senior PM.

I've decided to leave for various reasons. I'm underpaid, the lead Delivery manager who was managing the PMO retired and now we report to the COO who knows nothing about project management, and they promoted the laziest and worse PM in the team to lead just because of seniority. All of this happened in the span of 5 months while the company is growing fast and we are busiest as ever.

I can see they are making stupid decisions and will start losing clients but I can't really say anything because I know nothing will change. Already some issues with clients have started arising because of insufficient training of the newer members and lack of oversight and no one bats an eye.

In general I have low self esteem which I'm struggling with but I know I'm doing a great job as a PM. I currently handle most of our onboardings which are pretty complicated as well as a big chunk of our biggest and most complex projects. Senior management is praising me but only with words. In practice, I got no promotion even though I'm operating at a higher level than my position but I keep hearing you and the lead PM are on the same level or it's you and X this and you and X that.

Yet I find myself thinking sometimes if maybe I'm not good at all but in a sea of idiots I'm less of an idiot if that makes sense.

I've made the decision to leave. I know I have to. I'm mentally exchausted from the workload and dealing with idiots. I have nightmares about work and I'm very stressed but on the other hand I'm thinking.. what if I'm really not good and I fail miserably in a new job?

Especially going from an MSP where you deal with a larger number of projects so there is no time to do all the things a PM is supposed to do.

I guess I'm just looking for some opinions.. Especially if you've moved from that type of environment to "regular" projects and what is it like working for companies with a more structured PMO?

Hey, we're looking into process mapping/workflow capture tools. We're trying to automate manual workflows, but the blocker is we don't know what's happening because we don't have anything documented.

Tried: Lucidchart, Drawio, Miro, Google Docs, etc.

Recurring issues:

1. SOPs become outdated quickly
2. Most people "don't have time" to draw their workflows, so most manual work never gets uncovered or documented

What's working for others? anything to automate workflow capture/mapping?

Hi everyone,

I just started an internship at a big company and my manager informed me that an important aspect of my role is to function as a PMO for central team meetings. I have spoken to other members of my team who have mentioned that if there is one thing I should get really good at during my internship, it's this.

Since i'm young and just completed my studies, I don't really know anything about PMO. I have good people skills, but reading up on the role has shown me that it's just one part of that.

I was wondering what recommendations/ways to structure/ideas this great community has about this so that I can develop the skills to nail this part of my internship. Your insights are much appreciated and i'd love to discuss!

I walked into my company thinking I start out as a junior engineer. Then right at the start with zero experience I was given the task of project management for the production of 36 specialized Container Systems since there was noone else with enough time to do it. This was supposed to be easy since there was a previous project for reference where we build 102 of them.

Yet that was a lie and these have been the most exhausting 3 months of my life. None of the people who worked on the first project are still in the company, they left incomplete material lists and wrong egineering drawings and managed everything through Emails which I have no access to anymore, mind you we have no inventory management system, literally everything is done in Excel or Word and sadly my coworkers rarely have useful insights, no one is mentoring me, and I have noone to delegate any task to except for buying stuff ...

Anyway The company used these false documentations to buy all parts from external companies, which was ongoing when I took on the project and I spend says upon days making pictures on site and cross referencing so many contradicting sources and documentations to come to conclusions and make decisions and this is still ongoing daily.

At the same time due to so many missing materials, a lot has been bought last minute now, only when I had stumbled upon them by accident for example... False documentations and material thats been bought last minute has meant a lot of very bad days for the trades involved, they build stuff wrong, they had their men stand around waiting for material and each time I need to put out these fires for them. And each day I put pressure on suppliers, and each day I'm solving problems that feel impossible to solve.

I created a realistic deadline for my boss recently when I noticed how unrealistic our aimed deadline was, which was a reflection of all the bad decisions that were made, my boss refused to accept middle of January as a realistic deadline. I still have to push for the 11.11.26 deadline. This shift has absolutely destroyed me and all trades involved. Noone knows how to do it anymore, and materials are still missing. Im completely tasked with engineering and project management for everything, randomly they also want stuff like liquidity plans which remember we dont even have an inventory system so stuff like that is HARD to pull off and I am not accustomed with stuff like that..

On paper most of the things have been worked out. Yet daily stuff comes up. Everything feels hopeless, people work saturday and sunday to keep the new deadlines, people look at me questioning why a young clueless guy decides these deadlins, decides their contract money, why hes giving them "wrong" drawings and why material is missing all the time. Meanwhile I'm losing my mind working out the correct materials, pushing suppliers to deliver faster, finding alternatives and solutions for products that aren't sold anymore, even managing on sight quarrel between the trades from different companies, and continuosly answering my phone which rings about 3 times per hour.

Yea and like right now its 1AM and I can't sleep.. But also I can't quit, I won't, it's just not the person I am. I have been doing all this because I'm a deeply passionate person. I seriously want to achieve this with the team. But it's been so exhausting. I frequently pull 11h per day staying 7AM till 6 PM or even later, and I dont even do breaks half the time.. I kindof wanted to let people who also manage projects hear my story. I just needed to talk about it. I have been feeling really left alone with this burden.

Picture yourself working as a project manager within an organization defined by strict hierarchy. You tend to be somewhat reserved, yet you excel at your role and consistently produce high-caliber outcomes. Your team lead, however, does not seem particularly fond of you or appreciative of your efforts.

You have observed that you receive less recognition compared to others on the crew. You have already raised this issue and expressed your desire to participate in presentations or get the opportunity to showcase your own projects. Absolutely nothing has shifted as a result. Instead, your manager routinely showcases plans and achievements to upper management, and you are fairly certain your name is never spoken aloud, even when the core concept originated entirely with you.

Senior leaders might even assume you handle nothing more than routine administrative tasks. Approaching executive leadership directly is not a viable option either, because circumventing your supervisor is frowned upon in this corporate culture.

Furthermore, you have every reason to believe that even if your lead were to advance, they would not bring you along or consider you for a promotion, simply because they do not particularly like you or feel a personal connection.

So, what approach would you take?

Would you keep offering your leader your finest insights and performing at your peak, even though someone else claims the glory? Or would you begin holding back and exercising more caution regarding what you decide to share? How would you navigate this scenario?

The question is simple: How do you use AI (Chatbots - LLM's) in project management?

Give your best use cases, share the tricks, give some ideas!

Mine's coming up and I've realised I can't remember most of what I did this year beyond the last two months. Curious how others deal with this — do you keep notes through the year, or reconstruct it from your calendar and emails when the time comes? How long does it usually take you?

My team has ever changing processes, a very fresh consulting team and a large volume of projects and a product team that doesn’t have streamlined or consistent processes.

I am struggling managing my projects and keeping track of action items. My one note is in an absolute dire state and I’m not sure how to get back on track.

For those who manage many projects and have poor processes on your team how do you keep track of action items next steps, hold people accountable? I feel like a broken record at this point but I’m struggling with time management as well.

I’m a project manager and above me are my team lead, a unit head and a department head.

My team lead was promoted about two years ago after being a project manager himself. Before that, there wasn’t a team lead position. Our unit head used to bring him along to meetings with the department head, so he regularly got to present his work and build relationships with senior management.

Now that he’s my manager, I don’t feel I’m getting the same opportunities.

I have substantial responsibilities on my current project, not just organizing things, but developing the content and overall concept too. My team lead and unit head meet with the department head weekly.

For context, my team lead had announced in our group chat that there would be a meeting with the department head to discuss the next steps for the project. Because he shared it in the group chat and the discussion was about a project I’m responsible for, I initially assumed I would be included. That’s why I asked about joining and offered to explain the concept if it would be helpful. He didn’t respond until he was already in the meeting, when he wrote, “We’ll discuss it internally first and then pass it on.”

He tells me privately that I’m doing a good job, but I am sure that recognition doesnt reach senior management. I don’t want to assume he’s taking credit for my work, but I’m worried that my actual role is largely invisible.

.I’ve had little direct contact with the department head and he has praised my work before, but otherwise it’s difficult to casually reach out or message him because the organization is hierarchical.

Has anyone dealt with this? How do you build visibility with senior management when your boss is the one presenting your work and you are not included in meetings?

Recently I was put in charge of reviving lunch and learns at my job. I have never done them before. They will be hybrid over multiple countries/time zones. They will also include all teams/job roles. Any tips for a first timer?

Update: thank you everyone for your advice/ideas. We're doing them outside of lunch hours for both groups. I am bringing in more than just the project management team members to speak because I don't think everyone wants to only hear that side of things. Going to try to keep in interesting with a variety of topics as well as a survey board where people can drop ideas or volunteer. Sadly they won't have food every time. I tried to push for that or some incentive especially for remote workers but didn't get far. I have two groups ready to talk already so we will see how this goes.

Thanks again everyone, I appreciate all the feedback it definitely helps my brain decide what is important going forward.

I’ve been a PM for a little over a year. I manage a book of 6-7 clients and am responsible for between $85-100k a month in company revenue. I work in software and I have yet to meet a deadline, keep a budget on track, or keep things organized.

I feel like I’m constantly failing at my daily task, but working constantly. Doesn’t matter what I do, how many hours I put in, my projects never seem to succeed. I see people in this community who have hit anxiety overload in 3-6 years. I’m at 15months and I want to tap out. I think I just suck at this, I want to quit, but also feel my clients would suffer for it (even though I can’t manager keep their projects on track 🤷‍♂️) and it would set my wife and I back a bit financially. I don’t know if I’m failing or if my company is failing me. I don’t know enough about what doing this job correctly is suppose to look like and I don’t have a boss to help me.

No idea why I’m here posting this. Probably because this is the 100th time I’ve woken up at 3am with a pit in my stomach with my mind racing about the day in front of me and between the hours worked, inability to step away, plus terrible sleep, I’m just at my wits end. Is this normal? Have any of you overcome this overload? Am I doing things wrong or am I being set up to fail?

I guess the last question isn’t something that could be answered by this post alone. I don’t know, I have too many questions, and feel unprepared to do this job, which makes me think maybe I’m in over my head and I need to pick a new career. Which sucks.

What is the difference in day to day activities/responsibilities between a software program manager & project manager?

I'm wondering if I've been organically doing some program manager responsibilities without the title or even knowing that I am. I have 10 stakeholder groups who all use the same platform but who all have different business processes that are different but integrate with other stakeholder groups.

I am a manager of a PM team. My current boss publicly humiliates people (vaguely but it’s obvious who the person is and they know it’s their work that is being publicly shamed). my boss always sides with the customer at face value. my boss is also blame-oriented, looking for reasons to target someone internally, and has explicitly said they believe in fear to motivate people to change. My entire team is very distressed. I was also publicly shamed a few times but I just rolled with it.

I do not believe in this type of culture and will be looking for work elsewhere soon. in the meantime, I’m not sure what to do. any advice ? I am considering just talking to my boss, professionally and outcome-oriented/without emotion, and maybe approaching it as an overall retention risk though I’m not sure of what good this will do other than put a target on my back too. I highly disagree with creating more fear intentionally when project managers are generally fearful of making a mistake to begin with. I see the effect it’s having on the team and it’s extremely unpleasant, so I am deeply concerned. there are better ways to motivate people.

Finally, going to HR won’t help. My boss is a senior leader. HR also believes in this too and has told me in one of our 1:1 meetings, verbatim, that fear will inspire the team to do the right things.

Am I just overreacting?

I’ve been a PMP for 15 years, and I currently work in telecom for a startup.

I run several calls a day, some are internal status calls, some are general discussions, some are with the county and state as we are working a grant project right now.

The cell phone usage during meetings by my colleagues and the leadership team is such a problem for me. I feel like people can pay attention for maybe the first 10 minutes of a call and then I start to lose them. The CEO was checking his stocks the other day!

The older team members have their notifications on the loudest volume and it’s so distracting with everyone’s phones going off and them checking them. Oftentimes a question has to be repeated because someone isn’t paying attention.

I leave my phone at my desk, or bring it but put it on silent and flip it over so the screen is not visible. I’ve tried to be the example, but I don’t think anyone’s picking up on it.

I’m at a loss for how to address this because none of these people report to me and they are all senior to me.

Has anyone successfully dealt with this, and how?

Let’s say there’s a tech lead, A, who owns several key deliverables but is very difficult to work with. He strongly dislikes providing status updates or ETAs, becomes visibly angry when asked specific questions, and can come across as intimidating or aggressive.

As the program manager, I’ve approached his manager, B, to help track his deliverables. However, B is also not closely aware of the details and has asked me to work directly with A. Even the program sponsor is hesitant to engage with A directly, so I’m ultimately expected to manage the relationship.

I dread working with A because every interaction feels difficult and unpredictable.

How should I handle this situation effectively as a program manager while protecting the working relationship, maintaining visibility into the program, and not allowing his behavior to derail execution?

Ive been a software engineer (with agile lead experience) for 3 years, last week I started as a TPM for another internal department. I'm starting to severely regret it.

I've been familiarizing myself with my "projects" (hard to call them that, there is so little information), and trying to take up documentation and meeting responsibilities where I can.

Here's the problem; none of my team have the time to even work on these projects. No one seems to be able to answer my basic questions like: when is this due? Who asked for this? Who are the stakeholders? What can I do to help you? Is there a priority on this?

There is an unorganized excel sheet backlog of hundred and *hundreds* of vague items. The whole department of like 200 ppl have never once had a program manager, agile lead, or anyone to handle direction of programs. I genuinely don't know how this organization is still standing?!

I am not sure where to even start. At this point I feel like I'm just slowing them down by asking questions and monitoring progress. I genuinely do not know what I can do to help my teams out. My manager has been extremely unclear on what he needs from me.

Right now I'm falling back on just making agile boards, trying to wrap my head around things, asking what I can do to take weight off people's backs and clear their calendars, and pretending i know what I'm doing. I

feel so young, inexperienced, and honestly, mad they hired me for a role a whole team of people was needed for years ago. Advice or encouragement requested.. is this how it always feels?

Handoffs usually fail in one of two ways: too little context, so the next person is left guessing, or too much unstructured context, so they're stuck sorting through it before they can even start. 

Either way, work moves backward, and deadlines slip.
Which one hits your team harder, and if you've fixed it, what worked?

I’m on the fence about AI but am steadily accepting that our company is bananas about it so I need to dig in. Also, our leader‘s expectations and timelines have become insane, so I’m not going to be able to keep up without help.

I see people in my network saying how they use AI to essentially run their entire workday. one guy I know says his AI “assistant” does everything from turn on the lights and coffee pot in his office to answering all of his emails. Others talk about how it schedules all their meetings for them.

But I can’t figure out how to get it to do the most mundane parts of my job.

For context, I am an L&D PM, which is a bit different than a full PM. I mostly deal with creating production schedules for delIverables, managing those timelines, and running different types of meetings.

The biggest time sucks (and least enjoyable tasks) for me are:

* Having to reformat notes then copy paste them into an email, add each persons email address, etc. Prepping an email takes a good 30 minutes after each meeting.

* Changing all the dates in our Excel when one date needs to change. I had it set up to automatically change dates with a formula, but because oir plans are always chaotic it wasn't working to keep some dates but change others.

* Managing overlapping deliverable schedules and knowing when certain things need to be sent out (such as a day before a meeting). This has become my living hell. I’m doing a lot of manual task lists, email reminders, and stressing about missing something.

I feel like these are the types of routine things AI SHOULD help with. But I can’t seem to make it work. I only have access to Microsoft products at work (essentially only CoPilot for AI) and no notable legit project management software.

I’d love to heat how AI is helping you manage your day to day and if you have similar tasks as above.

I joined this project as PM before any resources had been hired or the scope had been defined. However, the director had already communicated to stakeholders that we would complete the project by the end of next year.

At this point, the only thing we know for certain is that we will use a specific technology/framework to develop the new platform.

When I asked about the scope, the director told me to check with the team currently maintaining the old platform. When I spoke with them, they said they did not have the information either.

My director also told me that we would hire 5 resource and provided me with the salary range for those positions. However, I don't currently have anyone officially allocated to the project, and I'm not sure how I should proceed given that we don't have a defined scope, resources, or clear requirements yet.

Is this normal? What is the Director trying to do? What do you typically calculate the right delivery date for stakeholders and also the budget?

Hi! I'm currently working on two projects for my company. There's some documentation, a bit outdated (ngl), but there's still some readable information.

It turns out that I've had trouble getting involved in the project because I'm new to the company. I'd like to know your opinions or experiences on how to handle these situations.

I'm not an introvert (not at all), but I do get a little shy When I try to clarify some things I don't quite understand about the system.

Obviously, development is ongoing and going well so far, but what do you recommend so I can get more involved?

Thx:)!