I have always been curious and interested in Project Management. The most I knew about it was from observing my Product Owner during my summer internship. Product Owner is somewhat similar to a Project Manager for Agile Methodology in a work environment. I witnessed my PO managing meetings and being a form of communication. It seems as if a PO presents information and reports back to the higher up. But I haven’t gotten a strong understanding of their role especially behind the scenes. So, out of curiosity, I decided to watch Project Management Foundations on Lynda.
I learned a lot from this crash course about project management and it actually clarified a lot of things for me. As a Project manager you have to think of many things. What problem are you solving? How are you going to solve the problem? What is your plan? How will you know when you’re done? How well did the project go? As one considers these questions its best to consider the processes as well:
Traditional Project Management Processes (Waterfall)
- Initiating
- Define project and develop initial scope, estimate cost, identify stakeholders, and plan resources
- Planning
- How to perform project and how will we know when we’re done
- Executing
- Launching project, bring resources onboard, introduce them to one another, explain rules you used to run project, and execute plan
- Monitoring and controlling
- See whether project is going to plan or not, control schedule if needed
- Closing
- Get client to accept project, document performance, gather lessons learned, close contracts, and help resources move on to next assignment
I think Waterfall is a very thorough and through out process as I have never been exposed to the process. I heard of the Waterfall process but didn’t know it was used as it is not mentioned anymore. However, it didn’t surprise me that Agile Project Management is becoming common, because this is something I was exposed to during my summer internship. Personally, I have to admit that I would prefer Agile Methodology better because Waterfall seems to be a long drawn process and can lead to the team being “burnt out,” bored, and frustrated. Now that I have more knowledge about the Waterfall process, Agile Methodology seems to be better and more effective.
Watching this crash course was interesting; however, I expected to have a different perspective of project management. It is possible that I just need to gain more experience, become more interactive/hands on so I can know more. I could only recall experiences I had over the summer but if I i didn't have this exposure prior to the course, I wouldn’t have been interested. However, I do feel more confident that I have the skills and a better understanding of what to expect for the role of Project Manager, because this is something I would like to pursue in the future.