So, last week was finally the week, when it was my turn to take over the role of being a project manager for our one-week customer project at the Data School Germany.
Before it started, I checked the schedule for the week to have an overview of our timetable in order to see when we had time to work on the project besides trainings. It was important for me to give my team the least stressful feeling during the week so that they could concentrate on their visualizations. With the knowledge of the timeslots, I tried to figure out when it was the best time to have a meeting (like did they had enough time to figure something out or is it unnecessary to meet up because we had only an one hour timeslot between a session and another meeting). So, I pinned a little note in our chat that showed where we had time for the project.
To have enough time for the project, I divided the team into three groups (it was an obvious decision that there were three teams, made by the ideas and wishes of the costumer for the week). After the kick off the team and I had a meeting where we discussed the tasks together and then everyone went in the groups to work on their topics. During the time the other Data Schoolers were working on their assignments, I continued to take care of the schedule, consulted with our mentor, collected questions that were yet to be sent to the client, and started working on a template for the dashboards. I scheduled a meeting for the afternoon to have an exchange if everybody knew what to do, where difficulties had occurred and to make sure that everything is fine. In addition, the goals of the individual groups were defined, which should be implemented by the next meeting.
I scheduled the next meeting for the next day at 4:30 p.m. There were about 5 hours between this and the last meeting to work on the project(s). The intermediate results of the groups were already good, and I was happy that everything was going so well. So, we could already work on fine points and talk about details. For me, it was also important to be the point of contact for anyone throughout the week who had problems or just needed someone to brainstorm with. So, I tried to keep reminding everyone that they were welcome to contact me (and I’m glad that they did).
After the check in on Wednesday the customer was happy with the results and had just a few points to add or change. This work was planned to be done by the next team meeting. Therefore, I planned as much time as possible and scheduled the next meeting on Thursday right before end of the working day. We also had to deal with the fact that we had an internal meeting that overlapped with our rehearsal time on Friday. So the meeting on Thursday afternoon was extended to an extensive rehearsal. After that, everyone should have time to fine-tune dashboards and incorporate feedback on Friday between the internal meeting and the project presentation.
It was a great week for me and I am very happy to have such cool and dedicated colleagues. Great work team! The customer was very happy, I was very happy and (from the feedback I get) the team was happy, too. Thanks to Frederik, Kristine, Mary-Leena, Nhung, Oksana, Tanya & Tram 😊