“I stopped doing what I see no point in”: project managers about their work and training
Help corporations to increase profits by analyzing data, launch a new website or application that users will like; make a cool product with a team for external clients - these and other tasks are performed by project managers. Before the start of the new Project Management in IT course in the Binary District, we asked graduates of the previous recruitment about what attracted them to this area. The former engineer, developer and PR manager talked about how they began to manage IT projects, why they decided to study this further and where they plan to use their skills.
Dmitry Kostyuchenko, Business Analyst, Leroy Merlin Data Value Creation Team
According to the first education I am an engineer, I received a diploma in MGTU im. N. E. Bauman, but the specialty did not work. After graduating from university, he additionally studied at the Higher School of Economics graduate school on strategic and corporate governance. In the sphere of IT, he got a job as a business analyst in one insurance company. Later he worked at the same position in an IT company Luxoft. He managed to work in a small startup and consulting. and the last ten months - in "Leroy".
“Leroy” has been actively developing in recent years, there is a startup atmosphere. If at Luxoft we had a separate project in our team, now, together with business intelligence, I actually simultaneously perform the function of a project manager and partly a Product Owner. Our team is engaged in projects in the field of Business Intelligence and other projects with data. This is a job of analyzing and preparing data for different departments of the company. Such projects can last from several days to several months.
Leroy Merlin has dozens of stores each with tens of thousands of products, thousands of processes, millions of customers. There is a lot of data.
Based on the data, mathematical models are built, based on a huge number of factors, hypotheses are tested at selected stores, their effectiveness is evaluated, and if successful, the model is applied to the entire network.
There are many projects and they are all different. For some, 2-3 people are required, for other projects there may be much more + active work with adjacent teams and divisions. My role, in addition to analysis, is to prioritize tasks from an internal customer (business, for example), decompose complex tasks, distribute them among team members, and keep track of the deadlines for their implementation. Projects, in addition to full-time employees, may involve contractors.
In the role of project manager, I have to keep track of the bottlenecks on the project. They can be associated with work with other teams and divisions - they have their own prioritization, their own vision. When I first started to work, we made a mistake on one of the projects: we did not fix all the agreements in writing and did not agree on the project plan. As a result, the project did not take five months, as planned, but twice as much. Now we do not allow such failures. If I see that the deadline for some reason is delayed, I inform the customer about it and together we figure out how to minimize risks, losses and other inconveniences.
In the future, I see myself as a product, but as long as I perform more project tasks, I decided that the Project Management in IT course would be more useful for me. I wanted to understand whether I was doing everything correctly, to see what techniques and tools experienced managers use in other companies - market leaders.
On the course, I saw that I solved most of my tasks in the same way as my fellow practitioners, who studied all this in the process of working in their companies, and not just from books. But some things that related to the organization of teamwork turned out to be new for me: for example, a tool for retrospective analysis according to the methodology of team retro .
The transition from one level to another, it seems to me, should be gradual. Later this year I plan to take another course for product managers - I’m going to learn how to solve food problems there.
Sergey Rychagov, head of web development at Coral Club International
I graduated from the Ryazan State Radiotechnical University with a degree in Information Systems and Technologies, Department of Automated Control Systems. Back in school, I took the second place in the city competition for developing websites, since then development has become my hobby. In 2006, when I was a student, I discovered IP in Ryazan, I earned it by creating websites. Three years later, when I received my diploma, I moved to Moscow. I wanted to get work experience in large companies, learn something new and develop in the circle of specialists.
In the company where I settled after the move, my position was called “Internet Project Manager”, but at the same time I was still developing. Then he became a team leader and spent less and less time developing. I could no longer follow the new trends as a developer, but I had managerial competencies. In the Coral Club, I occupy the position of head of a department, and am responsible for web and mobile applications.
Coral Club is an international company that employs hundreds of people. In my department - 16 employees. Initially, there were fewer of them: we started with three people. Now we have three main tasks: the development of a new company website and its new online store, as well as mobile applications for Android and iOS.
I went to the Project Management in IT course to compare the experience of Coral with the experience of other large companies.
As part of the course, we had a separate lecture block on product design, which was led by the head of the UX and UI department of MegaFon Gregory Savenok. Thanks to his lectures, I began to look at the design from a completely different angle.
We began to analyze user behavior, revealed flaws in UX and logic. Redesigned custom paths and only then began to develop the design. With this understanding and new knowledge that I gained in the Binary District courses, we are starting to develop a new site in our company.
We are also starting to introduce Agile, changing the structure and approach of work, uniting with other divisions, creating a separate division for E-commerce. The goal for the coming year is to increase the performance of the online store, as well as launch our new website and mobile application. In the future I want to immerse myself more in the work of product managers. I think the creation of an e-commerce team will help me in this: at least I can see the work of the Product Owner and the project owner closer.
Andrey Eremenko, Product / project manager Tinkoff.ru
My path to project management is very non-standard. I am a PR person by education, and I came to Tinkoff while I was studying operational work, which is far from IT. After a while I was already in charge of the sales department, and then moved to the foreclosure department for the same role. After 2 years I got bored and wanted new challenges. He moved to the department of business technology, in 3-4 months he adapted to the role of PM.
Today I manage three IT projects in Tinkoff. Service for small and medium business "cloud call center" - among them. The entrepreneur comes to us with his cold base (or without it), uploads to his personal account and adjusts the dialing parameters. Then, remote operators throughout Russia ring up the loaded base and sell goods or services. The customer listens to calls from his personal account and looks at the statistics of sales held.
Cloud call center is a proprietary product. This is a set of applications combined into a single client service. I have a double role here: project and product. As a project manager, I am responsible for the software production cycle. Looking for and eliminating bottlenecks. Interaction with this rarely goes beyond the team. As a product manager, I am responsible for product strategy and economics. Monitor the market, communicate with users. In this role, I communicate with partners, lawyers, marketers and sales.
Lectures on building team processes also “entered”. There are 16 people in my project team: business analysts, developers, QA and UX / UI-designers. Effectively manage such a team, relying on one agreement, it is impossible. You choose a framework and try to make the team stick to it.
In the next couple of years, I see for myself two scenarios: I’ll finally move from project management to product, or take up business. In any case, the course was useful to me.
Working with a customer, quality management, grocery analytics and custody are not a complete list of knowledge that a good project manager needs. You can get them on the Project Management in IT course. The managers of Tinkoff Bank, ABBYY, Acronis, Skyeng, Dodo Pizza, MegaFon and MTS share case studies from their practice. The closest course will be held March 18 - April 13.
Dmitry Kostyuchenko, Business Analyst, Leroy Merlin Data Value Creation Team
According to the first education I am an engineer, I received a diploma in MGTU im. N. E. Bauman, but the specialty did not work. After graduating from university, he additionally studied at the Higher School of Economics graduate school on strategic and corporate governance. In the sphere of IT, he got a job as a business analyst in one insurance company. Later he worked at the same position in an IT company Luxoft. He managed to work in a small startup and consulting. and the last ten months - in "Leroy".
“Leroy” has been actively developing in recent years, there is a startup atmosphere. If at Luxoft we had a separate project in our team, now, together with business intelligence, I actually simultaneously perform the function of a project manager and partly a Product Owner. Our team is engaged in projects in the field of Business Intelligence and other projects with data. This is a job of analyzing and preparing data for different departments of the company. Such projects can last from several days to several months.
Leroy Merlin has dozens of stores each with tens of thousands of products, thousands of processes, millions of customers. There is a lot of data.
A simple and understandable example of a project can be the development of reporting and data marts for one of the areas. Suppose the store needs to determine how many goods should remain on the shelves by the end of the month / week, when to purchase the next batch and what volumes.
Based on the data, mathematical models are built, based on a huge number of factors, hypotheses are tested at selected stores, their effectiveness is evaluated, and if successful, the model is applied to the entire network.
There are many projects and they are all different. For some, 2-3 people are required, for other projects there may be much more + active work with adjacent teams and divisions. My role, in addition to analysis, is to prioritize tasks from an internal customer (business, for example), decompose complex tasks, distribute them among team members, and keep track of the deadlines for their implementation. Projects, in addition to full-time employees, may involve contractors.
In the role of project manager, I have to keep track of the bottlenecks on the project. They can be associated with work with other teams and divisions - they have their own prioritization, their own vision. When I first started to work, we made a mistake on one of the projects: we did not fix all the agreements in writing and did not agree on the project plan. As a result, the project did not take five months, as planned, but twice as much. Now we do not allow such failures. If I see that the deadline for some reason is delayed, I inform the customer about it and together we figure out how to minimize risks, losses and other inconveniences.
Most of all in the current work I like the fact that I completely stopped doing what I do not see the point. There are companies where you just perform some function, do a project, and then see that it has not found application. Now I manage to do only what I see in the value - the things from which the exhaust for the business will be maximum. This is for me the drive.
In the future, I see myself as a product, but as long as I perform more project tasks, I decided that the Project Management in IT course would be more useful for me. I wanted to understand whether I was doing everything correctly, to see what techniques and tools experienced managers use in other companies - market leaders.
On the course, I saw that I solved most of my tasks in the same way as my fellow practitioners, who studied all this in the process of working in their companies, and not just from books. But some things that related to the organization of teamwork turned out to be new for me: for example, a tool for retrospective analysis according to the methodology of team retro .
The transition from one level to another, it seems to me, should be gradual. Later this year I plan to take another course for product managers - I’m going to learn how to solve food problems there.
Sergey Rychagov, head of web development at Coral Club International
I graduated from the Ryazan State Radiotechnical University with a degree in Information Systems and Technologies, Department of Automated Control Systems. Back in school, I took the second place in the city competition for developing websites, since then development has become my hobby. In 2006, when I was a student, I discovered IP in Ryazan, I earned it by creating websites. Three years later, when I received my diploma, I moved to Moscow. I wanted to get work experience in large companies, learn something new and develop in the circle of specialists.
In the company where I settled after the move, my position was called “Internet Project Manager”, but at the same time I was still developing. Then he became a team leader and spent less and less time developing. I could no longer follow the new trends as a developer, but I had managerial competencies. In the Coral Club, I occupy the position of head of a department, and am responsible for web and mobile applications.
Coral Club is an international company that employs hundreds of people. In my department - 16 employees. Initially, there were fewer of them: we started with three people. Now we have three main tasks: the development of a new company website and its new online store, as well as mobile applications for Android and iOS.
I went to the Project Management in IT course to compare the experience of Coral with the experience of other large companies.
In Russian companies, managers often call employees who do not have a single person subordinate, so metrics and performance indicators may differ.In addition, the course was useful to me for my project, which I do as a hobby. This is the online service Scrum Time for project management according to the Scrum methodology, I launched it several years ago. Initially, I created it in order to test my hypotheses in the field of marketing and development.
As part of the course, we had a separate lecture block on product design, which was led by the head of the UX and UI department of MegaFon Gregory Savenok. Thanks to his lectures, I began to look at the design from a completely different angle.
Now for me, design is not just a pretty picture; first of all it is common sense.
We began to analyze user behavior, revealed flaws in UX and logic. Redesigned custom paths and only then began to develop the design. With this understanding and new knowledge that I gained in the Binary District courses, we are starting to develop a new site in our company.
We are also starting to introduce Agile, changing the structure and approach of work, uniting with other divisions, creating a separate division for E-commerce. The goal for the coming year is to increase the performance of the online store, as well as launch our new website and mobile application. In the future I want to immerse myself more in the work of product managers. I think the creation of an e-commerce team will help me in this: at least I can see the work of the Product Owner and the project owner closer.
Andrey Eremenko, Product / project manager Tinkoff.ru
My path to project management is very non-standard. I am a PR person by education, and I came to Tinkoff while I was studying operational work, which is far from IT. After a while I was already in charge of the sales department, and then moved to the foreclosure department for the same role. After 2 years I got bored and wanted new challenges. He moved to the department of business technology, in 3-4 months he adapted to the role of PM.
I was greatly helped by managerial experience, communication and developed empathy. “Soft” skills of a project manager need no less than “hard drives” - the speakers of the Binary District talked about this, and I agree with them. If you know how to write queries to databases, understand the higher-level architecture and understand what the product cycle consists of, then the minimum program is completed.
Today I manage three IT projects in Tinkoff. Service for small and medium business "cloud call center" - among them. The entrepreneur comes to us with his cold base (or without it), uploads to his personal account and adjusts the dialing parameters. Then, remote operators throughout Russia ring up the loaded base and sell goods or services. The customer listens to calls from his personal account and looks at the statistics of sales held.
Cloud call center is a proprietary product. This is a set of applications combined into a single client service. I have a double role here: project and product. As a project manager, I am responsible for the software production cycle. Looking for and eliminating bottlenecks. Interaction with this rarely goes beyond the team. As a product manager, I am responsible for product strategy and economics. Monitor the market, communicate with users. In this role, I communicate with partners, lawyers, marketers and sales.
I have been working at Tinkoff for 9 years now, and it was interesting for me to “get out of the box” to see how everything happens with others. What terminology is used in other companies, what tools they use, what am I doing wrong and why. In the course of the course, I realized that in my work I did not pay enough attention to qualitative research.
Lectures on building team processes also “entered”. There are 16 people in my project team: business analysts, developers, QA and UX / UI-designers. Effectively manage such a team, relying on one agreement, it is impossible. You choose a framework and try to make the team stick to it.
In the next couple of years, I see for myself two scenarios: I’ll finally move from project management to product, or take up business. In any case, the course was useful to me.
Working with a customer, quality management, grocery analytics and custody are not a complete list of knowledge that a good project manager needs. You can get them on the Project Management in IT course. The managers of Tinkoff Bank, ABBYY, Acronis, Skyeng, Dodo Pizza, MegaFon and MTS share case studies from their practice. The closest course will be held March 18 - April 13.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/439316/