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These are the days when you wish your bed was already made
A million years ago, when I'd just left university, I was chatting to someone who told me she was a project manager. Oh yes, I said, what does that involve?
It means making sure the project is completed in time, she said.
I suspect at that point, for me, the word "project" still conjured up ring binders and lots of carefully cut-out pictures and geography field trips. I asked what she actually did on a day to day basis.
Oh, anything and everything, she said. Whatever it takes. Anything necessary to bring the project in.
Eventually I gave up, none the wiser.
These days, I have a little more grasp of project management. I understand the principles, though I'm still a little hazy about what a project manager actually does from one minute to the next.
If someone tells me they're a doctor, or a teacher, or a supermarket shelf-stacker then I understand (more or less) what they do. If they tell me they're a business systems analyst, or a health information technician then... well, to be honest, no idea. Someone who describes themselves as a manager or a civil servant could do pretty much anything.
But even for comprehensible jobs like dentist, or full-time parent, I don't really know how the day pans out. Is it wall to wall tooth-drilling/child-wrangling? Are there gaps of time where other, unexpected, stuff has to be fitted in? When someone says they're preparing a marketing campaign, how is their time spent? What does preparing samples in a lab actually involve? What do accountants really do?
So, tomorrow, I invite you to blog about your working day. On Monday February 4th - specifically - what did you do with your day? I'm more interested in the minutiae than the overarching goals - did you spend all your time writing emails? Were the mails answering questions or demanding answers? Maybe you were sitting in meetings, or travelling from A to B, or operating machinery, or selling things to other companies. Was it a normal, predictable Monday?
Tag it "mundane monday", and invite your friends to do the same...
It means making sure the project is completed in time, she said.
I suspect at that point, for me, the word "project" still conjured up ring binders and lots of carefully cut-out pictures and geography field trips. I asked what she actually did on a day to day basis.
Oh, anything and everything, she said. Whatever it takes. Anything necessary to bring the project in.
Eventually I gave up, none the wiser.
These days, I have a little more grasp of project management. I understand the principles, though I'm still a little hazy about what a project manager actually does from one minute to the next.
If someone tells me they're a doctor, or a teacher, or a supermarket shelf-stacker then I understand (more or less) what they do. If they tell me they're a business systems analyst, or a health information technician then... well, to be honest, no idea. Someone who describes themselves as a manager or a civil servant could do pretty much anything.
But even for comprehensible jobs like dentist, or full-time parent, I don't really know how the day pans out. Is it wall to wall tooth-drilling/child-wrangling? Are there gaps of time where other, unexpected, stuff has to be fitted in? When someone says they're preparing a marketing campaign, how is their time spent? What does preparing samples in a lab actually involve? What do accountants really do?
So, tomorrow, I invite you to blog about your working day. On Monday February 4th - specifically - what did you do with your day? I'm more interested in the minutiae than the overarching goals - did you spend all your time writing emails? Were the mails answering questions or demanding answers? Maybe you were sitting in meetings, or travelling from A to B, or operating machinery, or selling things to other companies. Was it a normal, predictable Monday?
Tag it "mundane monday", and invite your friends to do the same...
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After that it's a case of managing the project team, keeping track of expenditure, monitoring progress towards targets
... is really the level of detail at which I mean I fall down. What does "managing the project team" mean? How much time does it take (obviously depends on the size of the team)? Is it just a matter of asking person A on a Monday what they're doing this week (or telling them) and checking on Friday that they did it? Hence the request for a tedious breakdown of a single day :)
(Other than about ten minutes every three weeks, I'm rarely aware of my manager actually doing anything to manage me... I presume managers must do something, but it's always baffled me as to what.)
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I can't really write a Mundane Monday as today isn't a normal Monday really... but here's today:
10:30am - arrive at work
10:30am - 11:00am - check emails and flag any that need to be dealt with. Discover boss is WFH as she has a flu-type bug
11:00am - 12:00pm - reply to event bookings and queries
12:00pm - 12:30pm - write website post about upcoming event
12:30pm - 1.30pm - lunch and getting refreshments for evening meeting
1.30pm - 2.00pm - printing & collating documents and packing trolley bag for evening meeting
2:00pm - 3:30pm - implementing look and feel changes on website (with Online Community Manager)
3:30pm - 5:00pm - travelling
5:00pm - 5:30pm - meeting setup
5:30pm - 7:00pm - delivering meeting
7:00pm - 7:30pm - meeting takedown
7:30pm - hometime
Like I say, a non-standard day - I normally work 9-5 and don't normally do evening work. But we're short-handed at the moment.