Dear Professor,
When graduated I always thought that I could write code for the rest of my career. It was until my third year that I realized that I could do more than just writing code and the training in your courses at CMU opened new opportunity for me. When my company had an opening in software project manager, I applied and got it without any difficulty. I have been working as project manager for five years and this short letter is about the things I have learned as project manager. Since you often asked working graduates to share experience with current students, I hope that my letter may benefit some students who someday will manage software project.
The first thing that I have learned as a project manager is to select team member carefully. When I first became a manager, I was happy when someone wanted to work for me. I learned later that not all people were sincere and had good intention. If they did not work well with other, then it will hurt the whole project. Teamwork is complicated, and productivity has a lot to do with teamwork. Having team members argue really hurts productivity for everyone. You need to be very careful with people that have bad attitude; even they are skilled in their field. It is not worth to have skilled people argue with each other all the time. You also must be careful with people who talk too much but do less work. They like to talk about themselves and other things than actually do the work. Although it may seem that they do not have bad intention but they often distract the team.
As project manager, you will be very busy. You will not have much time for anything else as you will have many small tasks that add up and take away your precious time. That is why managing time is an important skill to have. You should have a small notebook to carry with you all the time to take note and keep a schedule. I know many people have a schedule but rarely follow it because it changes often. It is true, but without it you will be lost. You need to have a notebook to remind you of things to do. You will not remember everything. The point is it will help you to think about what you do with your time, what you could do with your time, and what you should do with your time. I often go to work early in the morning while the rest of my team has not arrived so I have no distractions. I also organize my tasks for that day and makes sure I will finish all of them before leaving work because I do not want to take any work home.
Every project is unique and every project will have problem. It is important to be prepared for it because team members will argue, some may leave the project and other problems will come up, and as project manager you must solve it before it became a big problem. You will need to remain calm to see the problem clearly and do not let other opinions to cloud your judgment. You must learn to look at things from the perspective of the other person and have sympathy when dealing with emotional issue. You do not want to force your decisions on others, when needed; you must start with a team discussion and learn to listen to their concern. Even you are the project manager but it is better to involve the team in decision making. It will make the team feel comfortable with you and a team decision is better than one person’s decision.
Some people believe project manager is a high position but to me it is only a role that you play in your career. Role will change with time so you need to be humble. You will meet many people who are better than you and some will be much more skilled than you. You must be honest and do not pretend to know things when you do not. You may be wrong so you must learn to listen and appreciate people who could help you. Everyone will respect people who can admit when they are wrong than someone who insist that they are always right. Do not let your ego get you into an argument and your team. You should learn to trust your team, and your team should be able to trust you. The best way to build trust with your team is to actually trust them first. Giving team members important responsibilities lets them know that you trust them, and they will likely trust you.
Managing projects is a big challenge and not everyone can be a project manager. You must start with technical skills first and learn as much as you can before stepping up to project management. Without good technical skills you will never become a good project manager. No one wants to work for an incompetent manager. If you want to be a good manager you need to observe how a good manager works. Every company has some good managers so you must seek them out and learn from them.
Even you are busy but you must make time for your team. If a team member wants to see you, he may have something to tell you. It will become more important as your project grows. Sometime team member can predict an issue before it happens and you need this type of information. Listening is a skill that few people have and you need to learn this skill. Most soft-skills trainings focus on presentation skill and communication skill but ignore listening, it is a big mistake. You may speak eloquently, you may be a good presenter but without listening well, you will not go far. Please take my advice, be humble and listen well than you will be successful. If you can only one soft skill, you should learn how to listen because without listening to others, it is easy to become bias with your own ideas then you can become a dictator and in that case no one want to work for you.
I hope that this short letter may help some of you. I do not mention about technical aspect because that is something you can learn from class or from books but these soft skills are what I have learned in my five years of managing software project.
Prof John Vu
Carnegie Mellon University
Original source: http://www.segvn.org/forum/mvnforum/viewthread_thread,1848
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