Project Management

Looking for some pointers to improve my own client management skills, I scoured the internet to find practical ideas on how to handle challenges better as the product owner (PO) in a client-services organization. I came up completely short.

Early in your transition to Scrum, you will be faced with a hard truth: your team or organization has job titles and Scrum has roles, and there is probably little to no overlap between the two. How do you map Susan, lead technical architect, and Tom, project manager, to the three Scrum roles: product owner, Scrum master, and developer?

In January of 2016, Caktus transitioned from a general Agile development environment to a more focused Scrum environment. Part of this transition entailed moving from a targeted budget allocation approach per project, to a self-organizing, goal-based team structure with no obvious provision for tight, consistent control over project budgets.

When I first became a digital project manager (DPM), I struggled to find relevant resources. A ton of information was available on traditional project management, but not much specifically on digital project management. Eventually, I connected with another DPM in my organization and we quickly became friends and confidants. She opened my eyes to the Digital PM Summit, a new conference targeted at DPMs, which was ultimately the inspiration for my new Meetup group.

Last Friday, Caktus set aside client projects for our regular quarterly ShipIt Day. From gerrymandered districts to RPython and meetup planning, the team started off 2017 with another great ShipIt.

In Scrum, the backlog of tasks is ordered by the Product Owner from highest to lowest business value - not merely prioritized - so that the team knows what the most valuable items are. This helps to prevent Product Owners/Project Managers from being able to say two or more Product Backlog Items (PBIs) are the “same priority.” And this makes sense for the most part. However there are times when this information is not enough.

Photo of Elizabeth speaking to DPM 2016 Summit by David Jordan.

When I first became a digital project manager, I struggled to find professional resources. There was a plethora of information available for traditional project management, but not much specifically for digital project management. Luckily, a colleague recommended the Digital PM Summit, sponsored by the Bureau of Digital.

For the past couple months, we’ve been working on a new white paper, “Shipping Faster: Django Team Improvements”. We examined our existing processes, looked at best practices, and considered what has or hasn’t worked across our dozens of simultaneous projects.

Monthly, we organize short Lightning Talks that take place during the lunch hour here at Caktus. Not only does this allow us a wonderful excuse to have lunch delivered from one of our many local foodie options, but it’s an excellent chance to expand our knowledge on a variety of topics. Past talks have included everything from an introduction to synthesizers and other forms of electronic music, to bug fixing, to the design inspiration behind our PyCon 2015 site.

Estimating development time is notoriously difficult, and when moving deadlines are added to the mix, shift happens.

Estimating development time for clients is difficult enough without having to second guess deadlines. Yet despite the best efforts, if your company has a healthy deal flow, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll eventually have a project deadline shift.