So You’ve Been Drafted – the Accidental Technology Project Manager
From Managing Nonprofit Technology Projects
So you find yourself in the role of a technology project manager - what now? We'll discuss what you might want to know (and how to learn it), what things you probably don't need to know, and some key factors for success.
Notetaker: Melinda
Contents |
Stories from accidental tech managers
---Hired a person to do hardware, no one to supervise them - Database guy made proposal to widen tech scope based on growth of organizational scope - Needed oversight on hardware hire
---Finance officer forced to encompass software procurement
---Clarissa sees everyone on the team to be tech managers - Learning as I go
---Research coordinator encompasses mySQL and web search – morph to tech manager
---Started as grant writer, everyone else is community organizing, so tech falls to her
---One of 2, so tech planning process, bringing in new people
---Has tons of content for a website, wants to take more a role to promote tech as part of scope
---Did a website, got assigned more and more tech tasks
---Web server went out of business, so transferring the web content was an immediate need with urgency that didn't have time to learn from scratch
---Needed someone for help desk, learned on the job - Has done website design but wants more understanding of website development - Identified herself as tech manager - CMS implementation, then interest was sparked in dynamic content, collaboration - Never going to know everything – make plans to discover where priorities require development
Main Things to Know
Expectations
Modeling
Transferable Skills
Identifying limitations
Suggestions for problem avoidance
Interaction with ED, honest about needing help
Distribute a process for troubleshooting to other users
Timeline of project, budgeting time for improved tools research
If worse comes to worse, can fall back on old flawed process
But the desire to avoid past trouble underscores need for budgeting time for research into software development
Lessons learned
Do the tech planning
Be a good client
Manage the expectations
Delegating tasks is key because an accidental TPM is going to be coming from an understaffed team
Troubleshooting takes time, teaching troubleshooting takes time
Just because people claim to be backing up, does not mean that they are actually ready to restore after a crash or data loss
Requirement in budget/ plan for internal audit, tech planning, and internal gathering of need identification
Consultants - Effectively delegating to capable people who know how to take some pressure off you
Podcasts and newsletters are easier to scale back for quality control - Newsletters can be feedback generator or it can be just a circulation number
One way data vs. exchange of data
Reinventing the wheel - Already have relationship with the staff instead of being an outsider, new to processes
Project managing, delegating, forming relationships for who can do various parts
Building relationships with other organizations that may be able to trade solutions
Time can be saved by making contact with mentor, careful to respect limited resources
Resources are required to make tech effective, lack of resources may be a sign that tech has outgrown practical scope
Ability to re prioritize goals of tech manager with changing organizational factors
Frequently each project is a brand new experience
Concept of change order - We have more in our budget than we thought - Oh, now that I see how its coming along, can you make these additions?
Be good question answerer and effective asker, helps in gathering needed information
Training people to help you can be time-consuming and ultimately inefficient
Be patient and listen carefully to needs assessment
Find a need to fill - And what need not to fill
