Anyone fairly familiar with the Data School will be aware of the weekly client projects we do towards the back end of our training, but for anyone not familiar, while we are in training we have 8 clients with two being internal and each week we are working as consultants for one of these clients. This starts with a project kick-off on the Monday morning and ends with a presentation of our work on Friday. For each of these client projects a different member of the cohort is Project Manager (PM) and for that week they are in charge of the rest of the group, what we work on, what groups we will work with and most importantly, what snacks we eat that week.
I was the sixth member of the cohort to be PM, and this gave me a lot to build on as I could take on the feedback that each PM prior to me had received and try to implement it during my reign. This included things like having standup meetings, understanding the data more as PM and better managing time so that the group isn't rushing and stressed before the presentation.
So for my week as PM we had an interesting client as it was technically internal, but it also felt like the the work we were doing was of the highest importance to us because we knew how much our work would be used, our client was the Data School and despite being a data company when it comes to the DS placements and their clients the data available is currently under utilized. If the sales team want to find out a particular piece information on an existing client there is no one place that can do this and similarly there is no way of the placement team to analyze trends in placements at the moment.
Although there were times where I did not feel in my element I would not say I felt uncomfortable as the PM, I knew going into it my biggest struggle would be letting others do work for me and not insisting on doing it myself. I think I handled this well as I it encouraged me to be as familiar with the data and the work as each person in the team which made the project much easier for everyone as I was able to help any member of the group myself instead of just pushing them in the direction of someone who might be able to help.
One area I wish I handled differently was re thinking the teams throughout the week as one of the team members was ill after Monday which meant the one of the teams was down a person, similarly as the project evolved the other team split into two separate dashboards and another group member was now by herself. Thankfully this person produced enough work on her own to complete her dashboard and this work was of great quality. Still I wish as the week went on I was more clinical on moving team members around to ensure we had enough people on each area.
Overall I am pleased with how my time as PM went, I feel each week the PM has improved as we have learnt from those prior and I feel I took the feedback of the previous PM's and really tired to implement that. This included things like having standups, more strict time frames and not letting the group jump into the data.