I’m super nosy.

I’m super nosy.
As a Project Manager, I encourage my team member to spam me.
_Always_ cc me in your email conversation with the client.
If the client drops me out of the cc, you include me back in.

Why? Do I always read all the emails?
Not really, but I can scan and skim really fast, and can get the gist of things.
Sometimes, if it gets really technical, my eyes might glaze over.

I tell my guys to also draw my attention to anything that they want to raise.
“Look here, Mr client has said on this email that the multi-currency option was agreed during pre-sales. It’s not in our SoW. What should we do?”

Then I can just jump in on the email (because I was cc’ed in, remember?), and I can take over scope conversations.

These type of discussions lay on the remit of the Project Manager.
Project team members are in charge of getting work done.

My job is to clear the way for them.
It’s my job to know everything… well, broadly.
I should know the pulse of the project, which bit is going well, which bit is a tad tricky to maneauver, who’s having trouble with who, etc.

It’s very hard for me to help, say, when the customer messages one of my team directly to do something that was out of scope.
Against her better judgement, that’s what she did.

However, that thing she did?
It didn’t go as planned, and turned out to be bigger and more complex than she had thought.

I only found out about it after the fact, and I had to tell the client:
1. that requested functionality was not within scope, so no – we won’t fix it, and
2. we will be invoicing them for the time spent doing the thing that wasn’t approved.

Client was not happy.
Team member gently chastised.
Me, bad guy all around (but that’s my job).

So always incude your PM.
They are there to step in and pick up discussions that are not for you to have (scope creep, budget, resourcing, invoice disputes, etc)

You can always say, “Go ask my PM. I am focusing on this apex class right now, and I cannot be disturbed.”

Yes, do that.
Having tough conversations is in my job description.
Even if it makes me the bad guy. 👾


#leadership
#projectmanagement
#zenhaoprotip
#personaldevelopment
#productivity
#gettingthingsdone
#salesforce
#ohana
#requirements
#ItsTheHumanElementThatCounts
#crm
#project

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