The Unpopular PM
As a proud millennial and child of the ‘90s, I distinctly remember the ubiquitous educational posters adorning the walls of my elementary and middle school imploring us to remember that “what is popular is not always right. What is right is not always popular.” What do you do when project stakeholders resist adopting effective program management practices?
Product Review: Nirvana.Work
I am constantly on the hunt for new productivity products, so I was looking forward to testing out Nirvana.Work, which bills itself as the world’s most powerful automated planning system. A lot of project management software can be convoluted, especially for young teams that are starting out. Nirvana.Work could be adapted for small-scale projects with relatively minimal effort.
Product Review: Hive
Hive is productivity and collaboration software that is famously used by teams at world-class companies ranging from Google to Starbucks to Toyota to IBM. As a productivity and community building enthusiast, Hive was on my list of products to try.
Invisible Work
After nearly 13 years as a technical program manager, I’ve learned that program managers and engineers are different people. And thank goodness for that—because our roles could not be more different.
Doing More of What You Love
As long as most of your job description falls into the “love” or “like” category, then you’ve got it pretty good in my book. For those parts that you dislike, there may be ways to minimize those activities and reshape your role to cater more to your strengths and interests.
My Product Journey
I still loved project management, but I wanted to diversify my skills to better position myself in a changing market. Deepening my product management skills required a lengthy process of discovery and a fair amount of hard work. Here are the steps I followed.
Product Review: Roadmunk
Roadmunk is a roadmapping software designed to fill a gap left by many popular project management products—the ability to communicate strategy to an executive audience. I’ve faced this challenge many times in my career when using the work management products commonly available in an office environment.
Product Review: Balsamiq
One tool that keeps coming up in the product management literature that I have not yet had the opportunity to use is Balsamiq. For those who haven’t heard of this product, Balsamiq is an online tool that you can use to create wireframes—or preliminary versions—of your product designs.
Product Review: Ganttic
This product review is about Ganttic, a resource planning software named after a project manager’s best friend, the Gantt chart. While the Gantt chart and I may not be besties, I was intrigued by Ganttic’s flexibility and large number of potential use cases, ranging from team calendar management to project management.
Product Review: Hey
Oh, hey! Here comes the ubiquitous Hey product review. Hey is a subscription-based email service that was developed by Basecamp, a time management software company renowned for its forward-leaning practices around the future of work. Productivity nerds like me have been eagerly awaiting the launch of Hey for months.
Product Review: TeuxDeux
Even though I primarily use Kanban boards to manage my tasks, like any card-carrying productivity enthusiast these days, I still can’t help but be a sucker for the old school to do list. When I came across TeuxDeux, a platform that bills itself as a simple yet elegant to do list for the web, I knew I had to sign up. To do lists and French? I’m in.
Product Review: Microsoft Planner
I’m not a spokesperson for Microsoft Planner, but I should be. It’s no exaggeration to say that this tool transformed the way I work and helped me recover from a place of burnout. Let me give the context for why I find Planner to be such an effective tool.