Re: first time managing a project

Watch out for "feature creep" also, i.e. requirements / specifications
changing
as you're going along.

How you handle that will probably be make or break for your project.
It's a
very difficult tightrope between frustrating the people who are waiting
on your
chip (regardless of whether it's customer specific or mass market) by
playing
hardball with a formal change request procedure, or frustrating your
team
by agreeing to spec' changes without agreeing schedule impacts arising
from
those changes.

Doing project management can be very challenging, keeping all those
plates spinning in the air at the same time, but it's very rewarding
when
you hand over the development at the end.

Don't take it personally if the development gets canned, it happens a
lot in our industry. I've never seen a bad project manager be the root
cause of a cancellation, it's usually external like missing a market
opportunity or whatever. In which case you can pin it on your product
marketing people (or your top-management, or your end customers) for
being too far behind the crest of the wave.

Last word, but in my personal experience I think women make better
project managers, as they're naturally gifted multi-taskers, and
usually
have better sift skills than typical male engineers. Not always, but on
average.

Alan

.

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